Two Former Chris Christie Aides Found Guilty in BridgeGate Trial
“But let me be clear once again, I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments” – Christie
The lane-closure scandal dubbed “Bridgegate” which tainted New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie’s presidential bid, rendered two convictions Friday.
Christie maintains he was unaware of the dubious plot to create traffic jams in Fort Lee, just outside of Manhattan.
NBC News reported:
Christie’s ex-deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, and his former top Port Authority official, Bill Baroni, had faced nine counts of conspiracy and fraud stemming from the scheme to block access to the George Washington Bridge as a means to punish Democratic Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie’s re-election bid.
The jury’s verdict comes after six weeks of dramatic testimony in which prosecutors argued the two spearheaded the plan in September 2013. Although Christie has maintained he had no knowledge or involvement in the lane closures, the so-called “Bridgegate” scandal has dogged the Republican for three years and undercut his failed presidential bid before it even began. Christie is a top Donald Trump surrogate and is currently planning the Republican nominee’s transition team if he wins the presidency.
In reacting to the verdict, Christie reiterated that he didn’t know about the plot, even as several witnesses said during the trial that he was aware of the plan before, during and after. Christie is currently scheduled to campaign for Trump in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania this weekend.
“Like so many people in New Jersey, I’m saddened by this case and I’m saddened about the choices made by Bill Baroni, Bridget Kelly and David Wildstein. Today’s verdict does not change this for me,” Christie said in a statement. “But let me be clear once again, I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments, and had no role in authorizing them. No believable evidence was presented to contradict that fact. Anything said to the contrary over the past six weeks in court is simply untrue.”
Sentencing has yet to happen, but the max penalty is a stiff one — a whopping 86 years in prison.
The defendants insisted they thought the lane closures were part of a traffic study and not a retributive vendetta.
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Comments
No worries, Trump will #DrainTheSwamp!
Hopefully this is the last we’ll see of that blowhard.
What is that white stuff on his chin?
Is he gorging on crispy cremes again, or has he still not washed his face since he “embraced” Obama after the hurricane in 2012?
Oh, goody! The feds get criminal convictions for a traffic jam, but can’t even find a way to get criminal indictments for:
Goldman Sachs, et al in the mortgage mess.
Fast n Furious gun running.
IRS gate targeting of conservatives.
Hillary’s security violations.
etc, etc, etc.
I’m glad DOJ has its priorities right.
Regardless of how guilty they are, they should not be subject to selective prosecution (persecution).
How can it be otherwise? The State-established Church is Pro-Choice, selective and opportunistic, unprincipled and unpredictable. We have been a on a progressive slope ever since they normalized abortion rites of unwanted, inconvenient, and life unworthy of life in a final solution, channeling Mengele through Planned Parenthood, progressive wars (e.g. social injustice adventurism), immigration reform (e.g. refugee crises, mass emigration), redistributive change (e.g. public/private monopolies or fascism, trickle-up poverty), class diversity (e.g. institutional racism, sexism), congruence (“=”) or selective exclusion, etc.
Hey, clown – An ambulance carrying a pregnant woman experiencing severe complications was delayed for hours. The fetus was subsequently lost. What do you think about that?
A precious ‘baby’ may have been lost because of callous actions by high level appointees of a vindictive Governor who wants to be Attorney General. Why would they possibly think that the Governor would want them to act in that way? Do you really believe the Governor wasn’t informed? What would be the point of doing it, if the Governor didn’t know about it?
Just remember. Tom Delay was convicted before his conviction was overturned by an appellate court.
True. But the entire point of that charade was the Left’s desire to remove Tom Delay from the board.
So they won that one.
And this is another good example of why we will lose the long game. Imagine playing chess against an opponent who is willing to simply remove our Rook from the board right under our nose. But we refuse to respond in kind because we have Principles.
We are losing the Republic because we think life is like some Hollywood movie where the bad guys cheat but our Hero sticks to the High Road and by some miracle wins in the end.
But that’s not how our story ends. It ends with us huddled around a camp stove in the Indoc Center, patting each other on the back for sticking to our principles.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…
We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
As they do now. The russkies entire history since year 0 has been as serfs. They are genetically incapable of anything else.
Gotta love the fact that Rags is downvoting Solzhenitsyn.
LI needs a call an exterminator. He’s not here in good faith.
Amateurs. They should have destroyed all the evidence, then ignored subpoenas to appear in court. Maybe slimmed the judge in the press too. We’re so incompetent, we can’t even do Corruption right 😉
They should have changed their political registration to democrat.
Golly, too bad Hillary didn’t shut down a lane of traffic. We’d surely have her locked up then for committing such a heinous crime against the public!! Nah, instead, Hillary did what she did (too much to mention) and will be rewarded with the Presidency if Trump doesn’t stop her.
She wouldn’t bother with such pettiness these days, but probably did something like that early in her political career. Too bad nobody stopped her in her.
Hey Bill closed down LA airport to get a haircut.
Christie’s probably not going to get a cabinet position in either circumstance of who wins Tuesday.
At least Trump had the good sense to pick Pence, not Kristykreme
So glad to see that the feds are putting their resources where they are truly needed. They got their scofflaws for causing a traffic jam.
Maybe they will start looking at the violence in Chicago now that the massive bridge caper is over.
I’m amused by the comments here.
Every prosecution is “selective”. Duh.
We commonly see arguments for the use of deadly force against those who cause “traffic jams” in other circumstances. Yet it’s minimized here. Pathetic.
Donald T-rump has attacked a judge, showing he does know how to do corruption. He does it very, very well.
I personally am delighted that a jury convicted two people for using their power in a political office to conduct a petty vendetta against someone, using and abusing the general public as tools.
This is a great illustration of the “values” of Christie and the Great God Cheeto, along with most NE Progressive pukes.
Rag: “I’m amused by the comments here.”
Because you misunderstand them, which is amusing to us.
“I personally am delighted that a jury convicted two people for using their power in a political office to conduct a petty vendetta against someone”
And everyone else was too. I say “was” because the rest of us have moved on. We’re frustrated that only the Right appears to be held accountable under the Rule of Law and are blowing off steam by making jokes about it.
Please try to catch up.
The “Right” you flack and hack for is like the Crips. It sure as hell isn’t “my team”, though you, Christie, Der Donald and these two corrupt-0-crats represent that “team” well.
You’re also selectively stupid. Note the Pennsylvania that was convicted just last week.
Rags, this guy has advocated “using the 2nd Amendment” as the “founders intended” and even suggested that LI authors slip into that cesspool of crazy and write actual posts about when and under what circumstances that should happen. Crazy town.
First of all, that’s just nuts and even if Hillary is elected and etc., it’s nuts. And second, and most importantly, who the hell would blog about a great way to start a freaking war on the U. S. government? Oh, right, right-wing sewer nutters who used to annoy people on InfoWars and now think their lunacy is “mainstream.” Fen’s not selectively stupid; he’s all stupid. And not worth your time.
Fuzzy: “this guy has advocated using the 2nd Amendment as the founders intended and even suggested that LI authors slip into that cesspool of crazy and write actual posts about when and under what circumstances that should happen. Crazy town.”
Crazy? You sure are establishing a pattern of dishonesty.
I asked the LI to post on where they thought the line was. Since they believe in rebellion within the law (as their dictionary defintion in the blog header says), and since its well established that the founders intended the 2nd to be a check on a tyrannical government, its not unreasonable to ask what their legal opinion is on the matter.
You choose to paint that as a call to violence. Very dishonest of you, and a typical tactic of someone like Rags.
I’m beginning to suspect you are a Rag sockpuppet.
Rag: “though you, Christie, Der Donald and these two corrupt-0-crats represent that “team” well. You’re also selectively stupid”
For the 12th time now, I don’t support Trump. I support whoever has the best chance of stopping Hillary from abusing the power of the Executive Branch. Because she is above the law.
And I’ve already said we (as in me too) are happy Team Christie was caught and punished. We are just venting that the Rule of Law only appears to be applied to those on the Right.
Talk about being selectively stupid. I thought the Sally Struthers School of Law had remedial reading comprehension classes. Did you fail at that too?
…Pennsylvania DA…
Rag: “Donald T-rump has attacked a judge, showing he does know how to do corruption. He does it very, very well.”
Attacked? That’s dishonest. He merely pointed out that a sitting judge that supports illegal immigration and has ties to La Raza should recuse himself from a case re illegal immigration.
“That’s dishonest”
If it comes from rags and is about trump, it is almost a certainty.
You’ve taken to simple bald-faced lying about me again.
What I said was completely true. I work at being truthful.
You’ll need to work harder. Although, I suspect you believe what you say, regardless of how wrong it is. Which means you’re just wrong, not dishonest, so I’ll retract what I said.
YourYou are, however, mistaken about the “case”. The case involves Trump U, not immigration.Ah, thanks for the correction.