BRIDGEGATE: Kelly has a good day– and who knew Christie and Cuomo were BFFs?
Bridget Anne Kelly, the former aide to Gov. Chris Christie on trial in federal court in Newark, had a good day Tuesday (10/4/16) thanks to the cross-examination work of her lawyer, Michael Critchley.
Critchley’s not argumentative, not bombastic. He doesn’t intimidate. And, when he’s discussing a set piece with government witness David Wildstein in the continuing political soap opera known as Bridgegate, he might as well be at a bar in West Orange trading comments about a playoff game with neighborhood denizens. Forceful but friendly.
And that’s how, in just one day, Critchley led Wildstein into two important admissions in front of the jury that tended to exculpate Kelly, his client. Almost three.
The first was that, in the middle of a discussion about how all the Big Boys running the state were discussing how to put together a package of lies to be foisted on the people of the state as a “report” on how the traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge happened, Critchley went down a list of about five top aides to Christie who were authors and then slipped in:
“Ms. Kelly had nothing to do with the report, did she?”
“No, sir,” said Wildstein about the woman who was deputy chief of staff to Christie. This didn’t help Bill Baroni, her co-defendant, who was deputy executive director of the Port Authority–Wildstein said he was an author.
Now, Wildstein already has accused Kelly of “instructing” him to begin the Fort Lee blockade. It should strike the jurors as odd that, while she played a major role in the event itself, she played no role in putting together the cover-up story.
In another context, Critchley also got Wildstein to admit to saying about Kelly that “she never made a decision on her own.” The witness complained Critchley had confused him–but the words were out there for the jury to hear.
Critchley also came very close to getting Wildstein to admit that Christie “approved” the plan to close the Fort Lee lanes at the George Washington Bridge to punish the BRIDGEGATE: Kelly has a good day– and who knew Christie and Cuomo were BFFs? |:
