Both Prosecution And Defense Agree Christie Lied About Bridgegate

I guess we know why Chris Christie aligned himself so early in the campaign with Donald Trump – compulsive liars like to stick together. Yesterday was the opening day of the trial of Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni in the Bridgegate scandal that closed lanes for four days on the George Washington Bridge and clogged traffic in Fort Lee, New Jersey in retaliation for that city’s mayor refusing to endorse Christie in his gubernatorial re-election campaign. Christie has consistently denied that he knew anything about the lane closures as they were occurring but only subsequently found out about them via media reports. The prosecution and the defense both stipulated in their opening statements that what Christie said was not true. Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna stated that Bill Baroni and David Wildstein bragged to Christie at a 9/11 memorial service that “there were traffic problems in Fort Lee and that Mayor Sokolich was not getting his calls returned.” That was on the third day of the lane closures.  The defense has already indicated that they will show Governor Christie and his top advisers were well aware of the lane closure plan and threw Kelly and Baroni under the bus in order to protect themselves. The star witness will be Wildstein who apparently was Christie’s hatchet man in the Port Authority and will testify for the prosecution against Kelly and Baroni. Wildstein has already pled guilty for his role in orchestrating the closures and the defense will try probably try to show that Wildstein was doing so under orders from Christie. That should make for interesting testimony and will probably increase questions about why Christie was not charged as well.