US Supreme Court Takes Up Bridgegate Case
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of Bridget Anne Kelly, the onetime aide to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who was convicted for her role in the 2013 Bridgegate conspiracy.
June 28, 2019 at 01:20 PM
5 minute read
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of Bridget Anne Kelly, the onetime aide to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who was convicted for her role in the 2013 Bridgegate conspiracy.
The court on Friday granted Kelly's petition for certiorari, which she filed earlier this year, contending that prosecutors in her case used, and courts below have accepted, “vague federal criminal law to impose 'standards of … good government' on 'local and state officials.'”
In a response last month, prosecutors had asked the court to deny the appeal, arguing that Kelly misstated the issues and failed to acknowledge the magnitude of the fraud she helped perpetuate against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the affected George Washington Bridge.
Although a portion of her conviction was vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit last year, Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff for Christie, petitioned the justices in February, saying the courts used overly broad interpretations of the fraud statutes in affirming her convictions.
“[T]he 'fraud' here—and the basis for convictions under two federal criminal statutes—was concealment of political motives for an otherwise legitimate official act,” Kelly said in the petition. “All that separates a routine decision by a public official from a federal felony, per the opinion below, is a jury finding that her public policy justification for the decision was not really and truly her subjective reason for making it.”
Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Ball responded in a 22-page brief: “The convictions in this case are not premised on a breach of a petition's duty to provide honest services, but rather involve a scheme to defraud in which a jury found that the lies were necessary to deprive the Port Authority of money or property.”
The brief also contended that the case wasn't simply that Kelly concealed her motives, but “several thousands of dollars were spent unnecessarily for paying employees for unnecessary work that served no legitimate Port Authority function and would not have been performed in the absence of the scheme to defraud.”
Kelly, represented by Jones Day attorney Yaakov Roth and New Jersey lawyer Michael Critchley Sr., issued a statement Friday.
“I am grateful and encouraged that the Supreme Court has decided to hear my case, and hopeful that this process will provide another opportunity for the truth to come out—for my sake, and more importantly, for the sake of my children. I am thankful to the Court for granting this opportunity.”
Ball at the U.S. Justice Department also did not return a call.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment Friday.
The Bridgegate scandal touched off in September 2013, when Kelly and others undertook a scheme to punish Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, by misusing Port Authority resources to cause traffic-stopping lane closures at the George Washington Bridge.
Prosecutors alleged that Kelly, William Baroni Jr., a former deputy executive director of the Port Authority, and David Wildstein, the former director of interstate capital projects at the Port Authority, concocted the scheme as a means of retaliation against Sokolich, a Democrat, for declining to endorse Christie, a Republican, in his bid for reelection as governor in 2013. Part of the scheme involved allegedly lying about a fictitious traffic study to provide cover for disrupting the traffic.
According to court documents and reports, to maximize the congestion and the punitive impact on Sokolich, the trio caused the lane and toll booth reductions to start on the first day of the school year without any advance notice.
Christie, who had served as a former U.S. attorney for New Jersey, at the time had presidential aspirations and sought the endorsement of Democrats, such as Sokolich. He has denied any involvement in the scandal or having known what the conspirators had orchestrated.
Wildstein pleaded, in May 2015, to a separate information charging him with two counts of conspiracy for his role in Bridgegate. Wildstein was sentenced in 2017 to three years of probation.
Following a six-week trial in Newark federal court in 2016, Baroni and Kelly were convicted on multiple counts.
Kelly was initially sentenced to 18 months behind bars for her role in the scandal, but later, five months were shaved from Kelly's original sentence after the Third Circuit in a precedential opinion vacated Kelly's civil rights convictions and remanded the case. The vacated counts charged Baroni and Kelly with violating the civil rights of motorists who were stuck in gridlock because of the lane closures. The charges of wire fraud and theft or bribery under §666 of the U.S. Criminal Code were upheld.
Kelly was resentenced last April to 13 months in prison.
Baroni, originally sentenced to 24 months in prison, had his sentence reduced to 18 months.
After her sentencing, Kelly, with Critchley at her side, issued a statement calling Christie “a bully and a liar.”
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