BRIDGEGATE TRIAL: Welcome to the brave new world of guilt by email
They are so guilty of not fully understanding that, no matter what they were talking about, their promiscuous use of email and text messages–relatively new and poorly appreciated methods of communication, laced with ambiguity–was just, well, dumb. Without email and without text messaging, Baroni and Kelly would not be in the federal dock now, charged with creating a traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge to punish a mayor, Mark Sokolich, who didn’t endorse their boss, Gov. Chris Christie.
Think about it. Kelly has a good chance of going to jail because of a one-liner in an email:
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
To the prosecution, that meant she was giving instructions to begin traffic jams. To her, she says, it meant relaying Christie’s approval of a traffic study that would cause traffic problems.
If she hadn’t written that line–as she noted sardonically on the stand–“We wouldn’t all know each other now.” If she had just said those words only in a telephone conversation with David Wildstein, the Christie pal who is the government’s main witness, there probably never would be a trial because, unless their phones were tapped–and why would they be?–it would be Wildstein’s word against hers as to what was said.
And Wildstein’s word is, well, not too good. Consider that, just before that email, BRIDGEGATE TRIAL: Welcome to the brave new world of guilt by email |: