BRIDGEGATE TRIAL–The six big holes in Wildstein’s testimony
David Wildstein, as expected, testified in federal court Tuesday that Gov. Chris Christie knew about and, at least, condoned the disruption of traffic across the George Washington Bridge for four days in September, 2013, to punish the mayor of Fort Lee who refused to endorse Christie for re-election. And, as expected, Christie repeated his denials. Now the question is will Wildstein’s tale survive what is expected to be a withering cross-examination by lawyers representing the two defendants in the trial, Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly.
Those lawyers—Michael Critchley for Kelly and Michael Baldassare for Baroni—have no real interest in Christie or his political fate. They want their clients acquitted and there is only one way to do that— destroy utterly the credibility of David Wildstein, a nerdy and admittedly nasty political trickster who somehow parlayed a political blog into a $150,000 a year job at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bistate agency that, it seems, became, under Christie, a political patronage mill and a source of easy money for Christie’s political allies.
Just how the fates of Christie and Kelly, a former top aide to Christie, and Bill Baroni, a former Republican state senator who became the top Jersey executive at the PA, will intersect isn’t clear. Kelly and Baroni could be either acquitted or convicted without implicating Christie. Acquitted—if the jury believes Wildstein himself was the sole force behind the traffic jams. Convicted—if it believes the prosecution’s contention that the three of them conspired to pull off what seems more like a school boy prank than political intrigue.
Christie himself, of course, has not been charged.
That he has not been charged creates a strange set of circumstances. Christie cannot cross-examine. He has to hope lawyers for Kelly and Baroni—people he might well have thrown under the bus—will destroy Wildstein for him.
And they just might. Because here are Wildstein’s vulnerabilities. Here are his weaknesses on cross-examination and the holes in his story:
Wildstein is an admitted liar.
Sitting only a few feet away from the jurors, he was led by prosecutors through a series of stories that show Wildstein often had only a mild regard for truth. The worst—he lied on his application for the PA job by saying he had a degree from BRIDGEGATE TRIAL–The six big holes in Wildstein’s testimony |: