BRIDGEGATE TRIAL: Was Baroni an altar boy in Christie’s political brothel?
Bill Baroni, literally fighting for his freedom and trying to save his future, set himself an all but impossible task in federal court: Trying to portray himself as just an honest bureaucrat innocently working in an atmosphere of corruption and cronyism and deception that, under Gov. Chris Christie, had turned the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey into a political brothel. The words he repeated again and again to assert his innocence–“David Wildstein said it and I believed him”–simply won’t provide him with the cover, or redemption, he seeks.
He knew Wildstein–and, for that matter, Christie–well enough to know he shouldn’t believe either was a straight-shooter. He knew Wildstein, a boyhood chum of the governor, told lies about himself.
No one who had risen as far as Baroni had risen could be so naïve.
Especially not someone who spent five years as an informant for the FBI. The FBI under then US Attorney Chris Christie. Too bad Judge Shirley Wigenton wouldn’t allow Baroni to say what he had done as an informer from 2005 to 2010.
Carefully and gently led through his testimony by defense lawyer Jennifer Mara, Baroni repeatedly sought to persuade the jury he was flat-out duped by Wildstein, a political operative, into believing the governor wanted a study done about what would happen if three lanes of traffic leading from Fort Lee to the toll BRIDGEGATE TRIAL: Was Baroni an altar boy in Christie’s political brothel? |: