NEWARK, N.J. (CN) — A day before assuring the public that none of his senior staffers were complicit in lane closures that crippled New Jersey traffic in 2013, Gov. Chris Christie heard about emails proving otherwise, a witness said Tuesday.
Kicking off this week's proceedings after the long weekend, ex-Christie staffer Deborah Gramiccioni told the court about the frenzy in the governor's office after four days of George Washington Bridge gridlock that September.
Christie had won the gubernatorial re-election in November by a landslide, but attention on the bridge scandal continued to mount.
By December, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey forced the resignations of David Wildstein and Bill Baroni Jr. The Port Authority initially said the lane closures were part of a traffic study, but prosecutors call this a pretense. They say Christie allies wanted to hurt Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for backing a Democrat over the governor in the election.
Wildstein and Baroni both owed their Port Authority jobs to Christie, but the governor took pains to distance his office from the scandal.
"I've made it very clear to everybody on my senior staff that if anyone had any knowledge about this that they needed to come forward to me and tell me about," Christie said at a Dec. 13 press conference on Baroni's departure. "And they've all assured me that they don't."
It would be another month before the public learned of evidence linking the scandal to Bridget Anne Kelly, deputy chief of staff to the governor at the time.
Gramiccioni testified Tuesday, however, that Christie knew beforehand.
With Wildstein having already pleaded guilty, Gramiccioni took the stand for federal prosecutors this morning to testify at Baroni and Kelly's joint fraud trial in Newark.
Other witnesses in the trial have brought up examples of Christie staffers transitioning between his campaign and public offices, and Gramiccioni is the latest example.
When Gramiccioni sat down with Baroni on Dec. 12 about being appointed his successor, according to her testimony, she asked whether there was any truth to the "hum" in the office about Kelly having sent emails about the lane closures.
Baroni's confirmation of this sent Gramiccioni to the governor that day; she said Christie was visibly concerned, "upset in his body," at the news.
That concern apparently turned to outrage on the morning of Dec. 13.
Just an hour before the governor's 11 a.m. press conference, according to the witness's testimony, Christie held a meeting with senior staffers and told them to scour their accounts for emails on the lane closures.
Gramiccioni said Christie was "incredibly angry" and used a "thunderous tone," telling staffers to send whatever they found to his chief counsel, Charles McKenna, and his chief of staff, Kevin O'Dowd.
There was no visible reaction from Kelly to the directive, the witness added.
Kelly's attorney Michael Critchley prompted several sustained objections from prosecutors in his cross-examination this afternoon.
"All that sound and fury was just made up," Critchley said after Gramiccioni denied knowing that Christie lied to reporters an hour after railing against staffers in the meeting.
During testimony last week, another former Christie staffer, Christina Renna, walked back her assertion that Christie lied.
Renna also spoke about her deletion mid-press-conference of an email she received from Kelly at the height of the lane closures.