Two key figures in New Jersey’s Bridgegate scandal appeared Monday in federal court, where they pleaded not guilty to charges that they bottlenecked the George Washington Bridge to exact revenge on a political opponent.
Bridget Kelly, Gov. Chris Christie’s former chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, his top appointee to the Port Authority, were each released on $150,000 bail on fraud and conspiracy charges in the scandal that has threatened the governor’s presidential hopes.
They were ordered to relinquish their passports, and their travel is limited to within the United States.
Kelly and Baroni are accused of helping to orchestrate a traffic jam on the busy George Washington Bridge in September 2013 as retribution against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Republican Christie in his re-election bid.
They were named in a nine-count indictment unsealed Friday after a yearlong investigation.
The indictment was handed up the same day that David Wildstein, who went to high school with Christie and later became a top official in the Port Authority, pleaded guilty to two criminal counts in connection with the bridge scandal.
Baroni professed his innocence.
“I would never risk my career, my job, my reputation for something like this,” Baroni told reporters outside federal court in Newark.
“I am an innocent man, and that is why I turned over thousands of pages of my own documents to the prosecutors and the legislator. And that is why I will testify on my own behalf as soon as the trial begins. I will spend every day working to clear my name and get my reputation back.”
Baroni and Kelly have each called Wildstein “a liar” who is spinning stories in a bid to stay out of prison.
US Attorney Paul Fishman, who announced the indictments Friday, said the defendants had “callously victimized” the citizens of Fort Lee, NJ — on the west side of the bridge — by purposely scheduling the closing of access lanes on the first day of the school year, causing a huge traffic jam.
Although the indictments did not implicate Christie, the charges against his aides have not helped him with the public. A new Monmouth University poll said nearly 70 percent of the 500 New Jersey residents surveyed said they do not think the governor has been “completely honest” about what he knows about the Fort Lee traffic jam.
