The Supreme Court said Friday it will take up a case involving two ex-aides to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie convicted in the 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal.
The dispute involves Bridget Kelly, then Christie’s deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, then deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Both were convicted in 2016 on fraud and civil rights charges — the latter were thrown out by a federal appeals court — in connection with their role in the traffic scandal, in which lanes to the George Washington Bridge were closed, causing crippling traffic delays.
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Prosecutors said the realignment was done to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, for not endorsing Christie’s 2013 reelection bid. But at the time, the New Jersey officials said the lane closures were part of a traffic study.
Kelly was sentenced to 13 months in prison and Baroni was sentenced to 18 months.
In urging the Supreme Court to take up the case, Kelly’s attorneys called the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to uphold the fraud convictions “untenable and dangerous.”
The 3rd Circuit said Kelly and the other officials defrauded the Port Authority of its property because they concealed the true reason for realigning the traffic lanes.
“The implications are astounding—and grave,” Kelly’s attorneys said in filings with the Supreme Court. “Nothing is easier than accusing a public official of harboring secret political or personal motives for his decisions. Such an allegation suffices, under the decision below, not just to vote against the official, or sue him for an injunction, but to indict him for fraud.”
The case will be heard in the Supreme Court’s next term, which begins in October.
Kelly, 46, has been free on bail since she was convicted and is due to report to federal prison next month.
A single mother of four, Kelly told USA Today in April she felt targeted by prosecutors and was a scapegoat for Christie, who claimed to have no knowledge of the traffic scheme and did not authorize the lane realignments. She was the “lowest-hanging fruit,” Kelly said.
Kelly said then she believes others high up in Christie’s administration knew about the plan to snarl traffic in Fort Lee and were involved in a cover-up. Christie was never charged, though the scandal roiled his 2016 presidential campaign.
“If they can put their head on a pillow at night, they must not have souls,” she said. “They certainly don’t have consciences.”
Prior to working for Christie, Kelly served as a legislative aide to former New Jersey Assemblyman David Russo, a Republican. But she was thrust into the national spotlight after an email, sent in August 2013 to the Port Authority’s David Wildstein, surfaced in early 2014. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Kelly wrote to Wildstein then.
The wording of the message, she said in April, was an attempt at humor. But the email prompted Christie to fire Kelly from her job, and she hasn’t been able to find work since. As the scandal gained national attention, Christie lambasted Kelly as “stupid” and a liar, while her lawyers said she was a “human pinata” for Christie’s administration.
After receiving her sentence in April, Kelly punched back at Christie, calling him a “bully.”
“Just because someone has the title of governor doesn’t give them the right to mislead others,” she said, according to the New York Times. “It’s dishonorable, and it only shows that person for the coward they are.”
