Wildstein Testifies Christie Lied About Bridgegate

Another story that may have been lost in the all the debate hoopla yesterday and today was the testimony of David Wildstein in the Bridgegate scandal trial. Wildstein was a member of the Christie loyalists in the Port Authority (PA) and he testified that he came up with the lane closure scheme and reported the idea to his boss Bill Baroni, the top staff appointment of Governor Christie at the PA. He also reported the idea to Bill Stepien who was Christie’s chief of staff at that time and repeated the idea to Bridget Ann Kelly when she replaced Stepien who left his position to run Christie’s gubernatorial re-election campaign. It was nearly two years after his original idea was proposed that it was actually put into effect. Today, Wildstein testified that he and Baroni bragged to Governor Christie about the lane closures as they were occurring when they were all at a 9/11 memorial service. Wildstein said the target of the closures, the mayor of Fort Lee, was constantly calling the PA about the closures but those calls were met with silence. According to Wildstein, Christie commented in a sarcastic voice, “I imagine he wouldn’t get his calls returned”.  Wildstein also testified that David Samson, the chairman of the PA, subsequently joined the conversation ad repeated to Christie that the mayor’s calls were not being returned. In addition to Wildstein’s testimony, the prosecution presented a video showing the meeting of all the men at the 9/11 service that Wildstein described.

Christie has continually denied that he knew about the lane closures either beforehand or as they were occurring and claims not to recall these conversations. That stance looks to be increasingly untenable as it is clear that his chief of staff, his campaign manager, and senior Port Authority executives knew about the plan in advance and Wildstein’s testimony now shows that Christie was informed of what was going on as the closures were occurring by three of these people who were under the clear impression that Christie approved of the lane closures. And Christie did nothing that would make them or us think otherwise. Incredibly, Christie is still maintaining his denial even after this testimony, saying, “I had no knowledge, prior to or during these lane reassignments, I had no role in authorizing it, I had no knowledge of it, and there’s never been any evidence put forward that I did”. Actually, Wildstein’s testimony under oath does count as evidence. It is only fitting that Christie is now an important part of the Trump campaign.