NEWARK — A federal jury convicted two former aides to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on Friday over a bizarre scheme to close access lanes to the George Washington Bridge as punishment against a mayor who declined to endorse the governor’s re-election.
The two defendants, Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, were each charged with seven counts of conspiracy and wire fraud, including misusing the resources of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge, and violating the rights of the citizens of Fort Lee, N.J., to travel without government restriction when the closings gridlocked their town over five days in September 2013.
The crimes carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, but the United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, said before the trial that there was “no way” his office would recommend that Ms. Kelly and Mr. Baroni serve that long. Federal sentencing guidelines suggest a sentence of from one year to three years.
The lane-closing scandal was the biggest political corruption case in New Jersey in years, riveting a state that has a long history of official malfeasance. It crippled Mr. Christie’s presidential candidacy this year and has left him deeply unpopular among his constituents.
In the six-week trial here in federal court, the prosecution and the defense both portrayed the Christie administration as a relentlessly political operation in the service of a fiery-tempered and ambitious governor.
Aides began using government resources to seek political endorsements the year Mr. Christie, a Republican, entered office with an eye to winning not just a broad re-election victory, but also the presidential race six years away.
Ms. Kelly, who was deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, sent the blunt email that prosecutors said set off the scheme and, when it was made public by a legislative subpoena in 2014, the scandal: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
Mr. Baroni, once Mr. Christie’s top staff appointee at the Port Authority, had ignored increasingly agitated phone, text and email messages from the mayor of Fort Lee about “an urgent matter of public safety” there, with emergency vehicles, school buses and commuters stuck in catastrophic traffic jams. Mr. Christie had avidly but unsuccessfully sought endorsement for re-election from the mayor, Mark J. Sokolich, a Democrat.
On the stand, both defendants said they had been duped by another Christie associate, David Wildstein, into believing that the lane closings were a legitimate traffic study. Mr. Wildstein, a secretive former political blogger, had been appointed as an enforcer for Mr. Christie at the Port Authority. Mr. Wildstein pleaded guilty to orchestrating the scheme and became the star witness for the government.
Mr. Wildstein testified that he had told Mr. Christie about the scheme at a Sept. 11 memorial service, in the middle of the lane closings. And Ms. Kelly testified that she had received the governor’s approval before she sent the email to trigger what she thought was the traffic study.
But prosecutors had drawn the charges tightly around the specific crime of closing the lanes and then covering up the scheme. At their urging, the judge had instructed the jury explicitly not to consider why other potential co-conspirators were not on trial.
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