Baroni said David Wildstein duped him and spoke about the 'crazy' Port Authority, his time as an FBI informant and the search for his birth mother
NEWARK - Bill Baroni's testimony in his own defense Monday at the George Washington Bridge lane closure trial further bore out that jurors will have to choose between competing and contradictory narratives.
Baroni, the Port Authority's former deputy executive director, testified he had no knowledge of the scheme to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for withholding his endorsement of Gov. Chris Christie by closing local access lanes to the bridge.
The government's star witness, former Port Authority official David Wildstein, previously testified Baroni was in on the plot all along.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes began a blistering cross-examination of Baroni about 90 minutes before testimony ended. Cortes' questioning will resume Tuesday morning. Co-defendant Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie's former deputy chief of staff, could take the stand later this week.
Here are some of the highlights from Baroni's day on the stand.
A better day for Christie?
The trial has offered up a lot of bad news for Christie through the first four weeks, with star prosecution witness Wildstein describing how he was at the Port Authority to do the governor's bidding and offering an unflattering portrait of how the governor's campaign wrangled endorsements, even dangling World Trade Center steel as an inducement.
The most difficult day came when Wildstein testified he and Baroni informed Christie, during 9/11 memorial services in 2013, that the lane closures were, indeed, intended to punish Mark Sokolich and that Christie responded with laughter.
On the stand Monday, Baroni countered Wildstein's claim, saying that while they did inform the governor a traffic study was being conducted and that it had created difficulties in Fort Lee, neither he nor Wildstein told Christie it was an act of political retribution.
Baroni said Wildstein, the Port Authority's former director of interstate capital projects, told the governor the study would allow him to claim credit for reducing traffic on the bridge's congested upper level.
"Was there any mention of political retribution?" he was asked.
"No," he said.
Shown a photo of Christie and Baroni laughing that day, Wildstein at their side, Baroni said he didn't recall precisely what they were talking about, but it wasn't the debacle in Fort Lee.
"Absolutely not," he said.
The testimony is a mixed bag for the governor. On the one hand, it refutes Wildstein's claim Christie knew the lane closures were a form of payback. But Baroni agreed with Wildstein's assertion that they discussed the closures.
Christie has said he knew nothing about the closures before or during the four-day operation.
Rube or rabble-rouser?
Prosecutors have tried to make the case that Baroni was as cold and calculated as Wildstein in orchestrating the September 2013 lane closures, reveling in the gridlock that ensued.
But on the stand Monday, Baroni painted himself as an unwitting pawn in Wildstein's game of comeuppance and said he didn't know the true nature of the closures until well after he had given a detailed presentation on the traffic study to a legislative committee investigating them.
Text messages sent to him by Wildstein on the first and second days of the closure outlined how traffic had improved on the I-80 and I-95 approaches to the bridge, lending credence to the idea that traffic was being measured, Baroni said.
Asked if he believed Wildstein was being honest with him, Barnoi replied: "I had no reason to believe he was not."
He also repeatedly expressed contrition for freezing out Sokolich when the mayor begged for help. He said he declined to respond to Sokolich's text messages and calls at the behest of Wildstein, who warned Baroni that if he did speak to the mayor, he would "wimp out" and relent on the closures, thereby ruining the traffic study.
Baroni used the words "regret" or "regretted" eight times during his day of testimony.
On cross-examination, Assistant Prosecutor Lee Cortes sought to show Baroni had always been responsive -- in many cases immediately -- to concerns expressed by Sokolich and other mayors. But as the lane closures played out, Cortes said, Baroni for the first time ignored the mayor over and over again.
"No response at all?" Cortes asked.
"That's right," Baroni answered.
"Treat him like he doesn't exist?"
Responded Baroni: "I wouldn't use that phrase, sir."
Bill Baroni, FBI informant
Baroni's secret life as an FBI informant came out in opening statements, but he provided more detail on the side job Monday, saying he met about every other month with an FBI agent to give him information and "context" about what was going on in Trenton.
He said the meetings began in 2005, when a man he knew from church asked to meet with him, explained he was an FBI agent and said he wanted to have ongoing discussions with him.
"I was serving a role of providing context in what was happening in state government, budgets, with programs, how things worked, whether or not I heard things around the Statehouse," Baroni said. "It was casual conversations once every other month or so."
Asked by defense attorney Jennifer Mara if he was in trouble of some sort, Baroni responded: "No, no. In fact I was told the opposite."
He said he assumed the agent contacted him because Baroni, a former assemblyman and state senator, had run on a platform of ethics.
The conversations persisted for about six years and later included a second FBI agent. Baroni said he believed they ended because the agent retired.
Mara didn't ask -- and Baroni didn't offer -- if the information he provided led to any criminal investigations.
The Port Authority a 'crazy' place to work
Baroni shed more light on how the long-festering New York-New Jersey infighting at the bistate agency grew more intense after the lane closures, calling the environment "crazy" and "toxic."
After the agency's New York-appointed executive director, Pat Foye, angrily demanded an end to the closures, Port Authority Chairman David Samson, a New Jersey appointee, fumed about Foye's meddling, Baroni said.
Taking the stand in his own defense, former Port Authority executive Bill Baroni testified Monday he was duped by David Wildstein and believed the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge were part of a legitimate traffic study. (Court sketch by Jane Rosenberg) "And now I got David Samson, who's the governor's best friend, who can't stand Pat Foye, yelling at me to go into the office and punch, his word, punch Pat Foye in the face," Baroni said.
Later, Baroni was asked if he did meet with Foye.
"Yes, I did," he said. "I did not punch him in the face."
Baroni spoke, too, about a simmering rivalry between the Port Authority Police Department and the New York City Police Department. Tensions were particularly acute when it came to 9/11 memorial events, he said, noting the bistate agency lost 87 employees on Sept. 11.
"We also dealt with an ongoing, every September 11th, argument between the PAPD, Port Authority Police, and the NYPD because there was a turf battle between who should be the police officers on the plaza on the day of 9/11," Baroni said. "So this was a constant battle where the NYPD would put a truck so the Port Authority put a truck. Or the NYPD would put three people and the PAPD would put three people."
Pregnant pause
Earlier in the trial, Wildstein described Baroni as "the best friend I ever had."
Baroni, apparently, didn't see it the same way. Or doesn't any longer.
Asked if Wildstein was his closest friend, Baroni responded: "I think David Wildstein and I have a very different definition of friendship, because I don't define a friend as someone who would lie to me over and over and over..."
He was then cut off by Cortes, who objected to the statement.
Asked again if he considered Wildstein one of the closest friends he ever had, Baroni paused for nearly 10 seconds, seemingly deep in thought.
"No," he finally said.
Searching for his mother
Baroni said early on in his testimony that he was born in Jacksonville, Fla., to an Irish woman and left by her at a Catholic Charities office in that city. He was later adopted and raised in Hamilton Township, graduating from Steinert High School.
But the thought of his birth mother stayed with him.
Indeed, after the lane closures, he was planning a trip to Ireland to find her in November 2013 when Wildstein told him he had been subpoenaed to appear before the legislative hearing to talk about the traffic study. In fact, he had been invited to the committee, not subpoenaed, an untruth Baroni apparently still resents given the reason for his trip overseas.
"'Subpoenaed' was the key word," Baroni said. "And that I could not get on the plane. I couldn't leave the country because I had been subpoenaed. And David Wildstein knew where I was going, and what I was doing, and why I was going. And he lied to me and told me I had been subpoenaed."
It's not clear if Baroni and his birth mother ever connected.
Mark Mueller may be reached at mmueller@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkJMueller. Find NJ.com on Facebook.