NEWARK, N.J. _ A federal prosecutor on Tuesday grilled New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's former deputy chief of staff over scores of emails and text messages he suggested pointed to the aide's involvement in a criminal conspiracy connected to the September 2013 lane closures at the George Washington Bridge.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna portrayed Bridget Anne Kelly as a senior adviser to Christie who viewed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a "goody bag" that could be used to win endorsements for the Republican governor's re-election campaign _ or to punish perceived enemies.
In the government's telling, Kelly was, as she wrote in one August 2013 email, someone who "love(d) holding a grudge"; a protege of Christie's political whiz kid, Bill Stepien, who taught her how to run a political operation in the governor's office; and, perhaps most important, a confidant to Port Authority official David Wildstein, the confessed culprit behind the lane closures.
During 4{ hours of cross-examination Tuesday, Khanna, a Bucks County native, sought to rebut two days of Kelly's impassioned direct testimony by methodically presenting jurors with documents that he suggested were hard evidence of Kelly's involvement in a scheme to cause massive traffic jams at the bridge to punish a local Democratic mayor for his refusal to endorse Christie in 2013.
Kelly took the stand Tuesday on the 24th day of the trial. Cross-examination is expected to continue Wednesday, and prosecutors and defense attorneys are likely to deliver their closing arguments later this week.
Kelly and Bill Baroni, Christie's former top executive appointee at the Port Authority, are charged with misusing the agency's resources to retaliate against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, among other counts. Wildstein, a cooperating witness, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in 2015.
Then they covered up the scheme by promoting a sham story about a traffic study, according to prosecutors.
To that end, Khanna on Tuesday repeatedly emphasized that Kelly had deleted the majority of her emails that mentioned the lane closures.
"No one asked you to delete it?" Khanna said of one email.
No, Kelly said.
"You decided on your own to delete it?"
"I was scared, and I didn't know what was happening, yes," Kelly told jurors. She has testified that Wildstein told her in June 2013 that he was working with professionals at the Port Authority on a traffic study.
Kelly has said that at Wildstein's instruction, she informed Christie and his chief of staff, Kevin O'Dowd, about the study before it was implemented. But once the lane closures had become a significant distraction for Christie in December 2013, he, O'Dowd, and others appeared to have forgotten about their knowledge, Kelly testified.
Christie and O'Dowd have denied having prior or contemporaneous knowledge of the lane closures.
On Sept. 9, the first day of the lane closures, Sokolich emailed Baroni regarding an "urgent matter of public safety." Baroni forwarded the email to Wildstein, who sent it to Kelly.
"Did (Baroni) call (Sokolich) back?" Kelly texted Wildstein.
"Radio silence," he responded. "His name comes right after Mayor Fulop," referring to Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop.
"Ty," Kelly texted back, meaning thank you.
Prosecutors allege, and Wildstein has testified, that Kelly and Baroni agreed ahead of time that they would not notify Fort Lee of the lane realignment or respond to the mayor's calls once the town was shut down by traffic backups.
The goal was to inflict maximum punishment on Sokolich, according to prosecutors.
Kelly has testified that to the contrary, she understood "radio silence" to mean that Baroni had failed to connect with Sokolich and was merely thanking Wildstein for keeping her informed.
Just two months earlier, though, Stepien, Christie's campaign manager, had used the same "radio silence" phrase to communicate a very different message: ignoring and punishing Fulop, according to evidence introduced by prosecutors.
Christie had already ordered Kelly to cancel meetings on July 18 with the newly elected mayor, according to her testimony, telling her that "no one is entitled to a f-ing meeting."
On July 22, Fulop wrote to Baroni requesting a meeting after the previous one fell through. Baroni forwarded the email to Wildstein, who sent it to Stepien.
Copying Kelly on the email, Stepien wrote: "Radio silence."
"And you understood here, 'radio silence' didn't just mean a failure to connect with Mayor Fulop, right?" Khanna asked.
"In this instance, no, I didn't," Kelly said.
"It meant a deliberate decision not to contact Mayor Fulop?"
Given that Christie had "screamed" at Kelly about the mayor just three days before receiving Stepien's email, "yes, it was crystal clear," Kelly said.
"Crystal clear," Khanna repeated.
He reminded jurors that Wildstein also wrote "radio silence" in his Sept. 9 text to Kelly _ and that Sokolich's name came "right after Mayor Fulop."
"Mayor Fulop, the same person who you knew was iced in July and August," Khanna said.
Kelly said that while Christie's animus toward Fulop was clear, there was no reason to believe Sokolich had fallen out of favor with the governor, so she did not understand "radio silence" to mean the same thing in each message.
Christie's campaign had been seeking Fulop's endorsement, according to emails introduced at trial. Fulop didn't endorse anyone until October 2013, when he said he would support the "Democratic ticket."
Khanna also suggested to jurors that if they were to believe Kelly, they'd also have to believe that at least three of the government's witnesses, including two who worked for Kelly in 2013, had lied under oath.
Kelly said the witnesses had either not told the truth or left out pertinent information.
Khanna challenged Kelly's explanation behind various emails that appeared to link her to a political retribution plot, including her Aug. 13, 2013, missive to Wildstein calling for "traffic problems in Fort Lee," to which he responded, "Got it."
Kelly has testified that she was simply "parroting" words Wildstein had used in discussing the study with her.
But Kelly's email didn't mention a "study" or that Christie was "OK" with such a study, as Kelly has testified, Khanna noted.
"It does not," Kelly said.
