TRENTON, N.J.: It was seven days into the trial in the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case when the government’s key witness dropped the bombshell: Gov. Chris Christie, he said, was told about the traffic jams while they were going on.
Christie, David Wildstein told the jury last week, responded with a laugh and a joke about the role politics played. The accusation blared in headlines across the country and immediately raised one question: Why wasn’t the Republican governor charged?
First off, the governor denies he did anything wrong or that he knew about the political revenge plot, often dubbed “Bridgegate,” that Wildstein says was tied to his 2013 re-election campaign.
Then there’s Wildstein’s testimony, in which he never says that Christie was directly told about the plot. Wildstein said that defendant Bill Baroni told the governor about the traffic jams and that the mayor wasn’t happy that he wasn’t getting his calls returned. Wildstein testified Baroni told the governor that Wildstein was monitoring the situation and the governor made what he took as a sarcastic joke regarding the “Wally Edge” pseudonym that Wildstein blogged under.
Former prosecutors say the answer is pretty simple. There’s nothing in that testimony that would be evidence to convict Christie of anything.
David Siegal, a former assistant federal prosecutor for southern New York, said Wildstein’s testimony and the photos of the meeting at a 9/11 memorial event don’t prove anything. Siegal works at the Haynes and Boone law firm and is not involved in the trial.
“You’d have to have better evidence to charge and convict the governor of the state of New Jersey,” Siegal said.
While the government’s case against Baroni and former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Kelly is built on both Wildstein’s testimony and electronic communication between them, there hasn’t been any information linking Christie directly to it.