WASHINGTON

Christie allies get prison for roles in Bridgegate scandal

Paul Berger and Dustin Racioppi

The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record

Bill Baroni, former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, arrives for sentencing March 29, 2017, at federal court in Newark, N.J., after being found guilty in November 2016 for his role in the Bridgegate scandal.

NEWARK, N.J. — The former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was sentenced to two years in prison Wednesday, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's former deputy chief of staff received 18 months in prison for roles in a conspiracy to close down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in September 2013.

Bill Baroni, 45, formerly one of the top officials at the Port Authority, and Bridget Anne Kelly, 44, previously a top Christie aide, were found guilty in November of deliberately causing gridlock in Fort Lee, N.J., in a scheme to punish the town’s mayor for refusing to endorse Christie’s 2013 re-election. The Port Authority owns and operates the bridge, the world's busiest.

"I was wrong," Baroni told U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton. "I've waited three years to say that."

The pair were found guilty on seven counts of conspiracy, fraud and civil-rights violations. Prosecutors had asked Wigenton to impose a prison term of about three years for each defendant for what they called “a stunningly brazen and vindictive abuse of power.”

“The use of government power at a publicly owned bridge to create traffic in town just to mess with one person,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes said. “Those are the actions out of the playbook of some dictator of a banana republic."

Bridget Kelly arrives March 29, 2017, for sentencing at federal court in Newark, N.J. The former aide to Gov. Chris Christie was found guilty in November 2016 in the Bridgegate scandal.

Kelly’s and Baroni’s lawyers requested probation and community service. Kelly, a single mother of three minors and a 20-year-old, also suggested a period of home confinement.

"Your biographical information will always have this senseless taint," Wigenton said as she handed down Baroni's sentence. Later, she said it could be argued that Baroni was more culpable than Kelly because he had power over the lane closures.

U.S. Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick called the sentences fair and reasonable in a mid-afternoon press conference.

Both Baroni and Kelly are expected to appeal their convictions.

"It's obviously a very difficult day for me and my children," Kelly said outside the courthouse. "This fight is far from over. I will not allow myself to be the scapegoat."

During her sentencing, she told Wigenton that she was sorry and regularly dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

"I realize how destructive and frustrating the lane realignment was for the residents of Fort Lee," Kelly said. "I never intended to harm anyone. I am sorry if my actions in any way caused any harm."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna called Kelly the "impetus behind the crime" for giving the OK for it to proceed.

Wednesday's sentencing capped a 3½-year political drama that damaged Christie's reputation, undermined his presidential campaign, and made the so-called Bridgegate scandal the butt of late-night talk-show jokes.

The scandal metastasized in January 2014 following The Record's publication of an August 2013 email from Kelly to Wildstein: "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

David Samson, former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, leaves the courthouse March 6, 2017, in Newark, N.J., after his sentencing.

The scandal also led to an investigation that brought down the governor's friend and mentor. David Samson was a former New Jersey attorney general sentenced in the same courthouse at the beginning of March.

Samson, Christie’s top appointee at the Port Authority, received one year’s home confinement for using his position as chairman of the agency to bribe United Airlines into running a money-losing flight between Newark and an airport close to his vacation home in South Carolina.

Both cases underlined how the Port Authority — a New Jersey and New York agency that owns and operates most of the New York metropolitan area's major bridges; tunnels; airports; seaports; the Port Authority Trans Hudson rail system, better known as PATH; and the 16-acre World Trade Center site — can be misused to court, bribe and punish business leaders and politicians.

In particular, the bridge lane closure trial showed how Christie, who relishes his persona as a tough talker, ran a calculating and at times vindictive administration that even in its earliest years had one eye on the 2016 presidential campaign.

During six weeks of testimony, prosecutors and defense lawyers described how the Christie administration showered Democratic officials with treats from the Port Authority “goody bag” to court endorsements to burnish the governor’s bi-partisan bona fides. Inducements included private tours of the World Trade Center construction site, agency grants and contracts, and pieces of burnt steel and flags from Ground Zero.

► 2016: Bridgegate brought dark inner workings of Christie team to light
► More: Who's who of Christie aides convicted of abusing power

Staffers kept a spreadsheet of the favors so they could remind officials how generous the administration had been. Civic leaders perceived as disloyal to Christie, even those in towns that relied upon constant communication with the Port Authority because they are the site of agency facilities, were punished with “radio silence.”

David Wildstein, Baroni’s second-in-command at the Port Authority and the man generally regarded as Christie’s eyes, ears and enforcer at the agency, testified that it was his idea to use the bridge as a weapon against Fort Lee's mayor, who had declined to endorse the governor.

David Wildstein leaves the federal courthouse in May 2015 in Newark, N.J., after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy.

That way the mayor would “fully understand that life would be more difficult for him in the second Christie term than it had been in the first,” Wildstein said.

Wildstein pleaded guilty to the conspiracy in 2015 and served as the government’s star witness at Baroni's and Kelly's trial. A date for his sentencing has not been set.

Kelly and Baroni were found guilty of conspiring with Wildstein to create gridlock in Fort Lee by shutting down two of three access lanes to the bridge to punish Mayor Mark Sokolich for refusing to endorse Christie’s re-election.

They deliberately ignored Sokolich’s pleas for help during the week of the lane closures, and Baroni covered up the true purpose of the scheme by insisting that it was part of a traffic study.

The closures were timed to coincide with the first week of school in September, severely delaying school buses, commuters and emergency vehicles over four mornings. The restrictions were lifted on the fifth morning on the orders of Executive Director Pat Foye of the Port Authority, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top appointee at the agency.

Christie denied all knowledge of the scheme and spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money on an external report that absolved him of blame. Though Christie never was charged in the criminal case, multiple witnesses at the trial testified that Christie was told of the lane closures before, during and shortly after they took place.

But Baroni and Wildstein testified that they joked with Christie about the traffic problems in Fort Lee — as they were occurring — at a Sept. 11 anniversary event at the World Trade Center in 2013. Kelly said she informed Christie of the lane reductions before they began and warned him about traffic problems in Fort Lee during the week of the closures.

► 5 things: What we still don’t know about the Bridgegate scandal
► Witness: Christie, Cuomo talked about report to make Bridgegate 'go away'

Several top aides testified that they warned Christie that some of his top allies were involved with the closures in December 2013, around the time that Wildstein and Baroni were forced to resign.

Christie fired Kelly in January 2014 when the "time for some traffic problems" email surfaced, and he distanced himself from his 2013 campaign manager Bill Stepien, who has gone on to become President Trump’s political director.

As comprehensive as the trial was, with dozens of witnesses and hundreds of excerpts from emails, text messages, documents and video recordings, it still left many unanswered questions, in particular who else knew about the scheme.

► More: Plot to foul bridge traffic ID'd 2 years earlier
► More: Christie's team kept spreadsheet of favors done for mayors

In the months leading up to the trial and in its aftermath, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, who has since left his post after Trump requested his resignation, emphasized that his office prosecuted only those for whom there was “evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.”

A group of media outlets fought for the release of prosecutors' list of people suspected of involvement in the plot. But one of the men on that list raised a legal challenge and succeeded in blocking its release.

Follow Paul Berger and Dustin Racioppi on Twitter: @pdberger and @dracioppi