William Baroni, former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, left, and Bridget Anne Kelly, former deputy chief of staff for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, exit the federal courthouse in Newark, New Jersey, on Nov. 2, 2016. Photo: Peter Foley/Bloomberg

The politically motivated lane realignment scheme on the George Washington Bridge, planned for the purpose of generating gridlock in the town of Fort Lee, was not sufficient grounds to convict them of defrauding the government, Bridgegate defendants Bridget Anne Kelly and William Baroni Jr. argued in briefs filed Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kelly and Baroni are asking the justices to reject the theory of their 2016 convictions, which is that they committed fraud by realigning access lanes to the bridge to extract political retribution on Fort Lee's mayor for failing to endorse Gov. Chris Christie's reelection campaign, while falsely claiming that the changes were made under the auspices of a traffic study.

Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to Christie, and Baroni, a deputy director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, asserted in their Supreme Court briefs that the court should reject the prosecution's theory that mischaracterizing the reason for the lane realignments helped them facilitate fraud against the Port Authority. As Kelly and Baroni describe the prosecution's view of the case, the traffic study guise allowed other Port Authority employees to carry out the scheme without being overruled by supervisors who might object to the underlying political motives. But they warn the government's theory, if allowed to stand, could have grave implications.

"It would readily allow the indictment and prosecution of nearly any public official in the nation. And it would effectively unwind 30 years of this court's jurisprudence reining in the far-flung honest-services fraud theories that prosecutors have invoked to enforce their preferred visions of good government. These consequences, both practical and doctrinal, and none of which the Third Circuit denied, make it abundantly clear that the decision below is wrong," said Kelly's brief, filed by Yaakov Roth of Jones Day in Washington.

"Some may find politically motivated decisions like these to be unappealing aspects of local politics, but no one would deny that they are aspects of local politics," according to the brief from Baroni, whose counsel of record is Michael Levy of Sidley Austin in New York. "And they have never before been deemed criminal. If the court endorses the government's theory, any public official who is not indicted when he or she engages in such activity will have to thank the grace of prosecutorial discretion."

Kelly and Baroni were each convicted in connection with the lane closures. Baroni was initially sentenced to 24 months in prison and Kelly drew 18 months, but after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated two counts for each of the defendants in November 2018, their sentences were reduced to 18 months for Baroni and 13 months for Kelly.

Kelly appealed to the Supreme Court after the Third Circuit issued its ruling. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in July. Baroni said in Tuesday's filing that he did not join Kelly in seeking certiorari at that time because he opted instead to begin serving his sentence while deciding to seek further review of the conviction. Later, he was concerned that filing for certiorari would delay Kelly's petition, so he opted to seek review of the Third Circuit decision by filing as a respondent, as provided for in the court's rules.

Both Kelly and Baroni argued in briefs that their convictions go against the Supreme Court's past rulings on honest services fraud.

"The convictions here stem from the government's attempt to work around those decisions and prosecute the same conduct using the novel theory that a public official who offers an insincere justification for an official decision in order to conceal a political motive causes the deprivation of the public money or property expended in connection with that decision," Baroni's brief to the Supreme Court states. "Because every official decision requires the expenditure of at least some money or property, the government's theory would nullify McNally and Skilling, subjecting state and local officials to the same federal code of good government that this court has disallowed. For that reason, the convictions should be reversed."