The attorney for Bill Baroni said the government's entire case was build on an admitted liar who would do anything to stay out of prison.
NEWARK--Every road in Bridgegate scandal went through David Wildstein, argued an attorney for Bill Baroni in his final summations to the jury Friday, assailing the credibility of the government's key witness against him.
After prosecutors spent most of the day going methodically through the dozens of emails, texts and voluminous testimony at the trial charging Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly with conspiracy and fraud in connection with the 2013 lane closures at the George Washington Bridge, Michael Baldassare, who represents Baroni, focused his closing arguments almost entirely on Wildstein.
"They built their case around him," he declared, telling jurors that Wildstein took the stand and admitted from the start that he lied. Baldassare claimed Wildstein would say anything to stay out of jail.
"All you have is his words," he said.
Scenes from the Bridgegate courtroom
Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Kelly, who served as a deputy chief of staff to Gov. Chris Christie, are accused of plotting to shut down two out of three local access toll lanes at the bridge to deliberately cause massive traffic backups in Fort Lee. Prosecutors say the plan was intended from the start as political retribution to punish Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of the borough, over of his refusal to endorse the Republican governor for re-election.
Wildstein, a GOP operative who was hired to a $150,000-a-year patronage job at the Port Authority, admitted he was the one who came up with the plan.
In eight days of testimony, Wildstein--who boasted of past dirty tricks, including such exploits as stealing the jacket of U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg before the start of a political debate--said he took his direction of Kelly as his representative in the governor's office, and told jurors that Baroni helped put the bridge plan into play.
Wildstein testified he came up with a bogus cover story to disguise the true purpose of the lane closures, helping draft a press release that claimed it was all part of a traffic study into how to reduce congestion on the main approach to the toll plaza. Baroni and Kelly, who both testified in their own defense, said they believed the traffic study story.
Wildstein also implicated Christie, saying the governor was told about the traffic problems in Fort Lee at a 9/11 memorial ceremony the week of the lane closures. Christie has repeatedly denied any advance knowledge of what happened in Fort Lee, and was never charged with any wrongdoing.
In his closing, Baldassare questioned whether there was any evidence to show there wasn't a traffic study.
"Was it real? Who knows? I submit nobody knows because no one ever established a traffic protocol," he said. "I know we heard from the engineers who collected data and made recommendations. That sounds like a study."
At the same time, he said testimony of other Port Authority officials painted Wildstein as a feared and hated man who could not be fired because of his claimed connections with Christie. Yet the governor himself was never called as a witness.
"They would never put Chris Christie on the stand. Because all he would have said on that stand is that David Wildstein is a liar," said the defense attorney.
Despite emails that show Baroni did not respond to a series of emails, texts, voicemails and letters from Sokolich in the aftermath of the traffic nightmare in Fort Lee, Baldassare insisted the only evidence suggesting a conspiracy came from Wildstein's own testimony.
"They didn't sit under a bare light bulb talking about how to screw Mark Sokolich," he argued. "The notion that Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly conspired with David Wildstein comes from one place. It comes from the mouth and the mind of David Wildstein."
Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or on Facebook. Follow NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter.