NEWARK, N.J. _ A federal judge Thursday rejected an attempt by the defendants in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure case to subpoena New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's phone and other records.
U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton, ruling from the bench, said parts of a subpoena issued by the defense to the governor's office were too broad and did not meet a legal threshold established in the Watergate affair involving President Richard Nixon.
The law firm representing Christie's office, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher L.L.P., says it has already provided the defendants _ Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie's former deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, a former top Christie appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey _ the same documents it gave prosecutors in response to grand jury subpoenas in 2014.
Kelly and Baroni are accused of causing massive traffic jams in Fort Lee in September 2013, as part of a plot to punish a local mayor for refusing to endorse Christie for re-election. They face trial in September.
After more than two hours of oral argument here, Baroni's attorney, Michael Baldassare, told reporters that he would issue trial subpoenas to lawyers representing Christie and several of his former top aides, seeking phone records, among other things. Baldassare said the trial subpoenas would require recipients to provide the requested information on the first day of trial.
Christie exchanged a dozen text messages with Regina Egea, head of the unit that oversaw the Port Authority, on Dec. 9, 2013, according to phone records subpoenaed by lawmakers who investigated the lane closures. The legislative committee that was investigating the matter was unable to recover the text messages and concluded that they had been deleted.
At the time, Port Authority personnel were testifying before the Legislature.
Defense attorneys say they want to know what Christie and Egea were discussing and when the texts were deleted. Egea has said she texted the governor about the Port Authority employees' professionalism.
"I believe the governor and his lawyers are simply trying to run out the clock ... until the trial starts, after the election, or something like that," Baldassare told Wigenton.
Christie is a top adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign and is considered a possible running mate.
Baroni and Kelly had requested of the governor's office "all phones and other devices," including iPads and computers, reviewed by Gibson Dunn before it completed an internal investigation of the lane closures in March 2014. It also requested "all forensic analyses" conducted of those devices.
The defendants' subpoena also sought "all documents" reviewed by Gibson Dunn in preparation for its report.
Christie's office retained Gibson Dunn in January 2014 to investigate the closures after emails surfaced implicating Kelly and former Port Authority official David Wildstein in the scandal.
Wildstein has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the government.
On Thursday, Wigenton ruled that Kelly and Baroni had failed to show that the information they sought through the subpoena was relevant, potentially admissible in court, and specific, as required by the Nixon precedent. "That's where there are issues, quite frankly," Wigenton said.
For example, the request for all phones and other devices, she said, was "so sweeping" that it told the court nothing about the "specific information" the defendants wanted to obtain.
Michael Critchley Sr., an attorney for Kelly, said the judge's ruling "doesn't affect our defense one iota."
Wigenton's ruling followed a colorful hearing, in which defense attorneys sought to portray Gibson Dunn as woefully incapable of determining what information would be "relevant" to the case.
For example, defense attorneys said, Gibson Dunn had initially failed to review the contents of a personal email account Christie shared with his wife, Mary Pat.
Baldassare said he came across the account when documents he obtained through discovery showed an email Christie sent to David Samson, then chairman of the Port Authority, in December 2013, with a link to a news article about the lane closures.
"If and when the governor gets in that box and testifies," Baldassare said, indicating the witness stand, "that email may be" very important.
Critchley questioned the integrity of Gibson Dunn's internal investigation into the role the governor's office played in the lane closures.
He noted that one of the firm's investigators, Debra Wong Yang, is family friends with Christie and raised money for his unsuccessful presidential campaign.
"I am not comfortable with you, Mr. Mastro, making the determination of relevance," Critchley said, referring to Gibson Dunn lead attorney Randy Mastro.
For his part, Mastro denounced the attacks on his investigation as "an attempt to turn this trial into a sideshow."
Authorizing the subpoena would "literally be unprecedented in the history of this country," Mastro told Wigenton, comparing it to a search warrant granted without probable cause.
Much of the back-and-forth centered on Christie's cellphone and his missing texts with Egea.
It's not clear what records remain of Christie's old cellphone.
The phone is "in the hands of the government, as far as I know," Christie told reporters in May.
Then last month, he said at a news conference: "When all that stuff initially occurred, I turned my phone over to the lawyers at that time to facilitate their ability to cooperate fully with all the investigations. I haven't seen the phone since, and I assume that's where it still is."
Prosecutors say they never had possession of the cellphone and instead relied on Gibson Dunn to provide materials responsive to grand jury subpoenas.
And in a court filing late last month, Gibson Dunn wrote, "After preserving the governor's phone's contents, GDC searched for any responsive material and, once the search was completed, returned the phone and nonresponsive data."
