A former aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s office said Thursday that she used a “poor choice of words” when she claimed that Christie “flat out lied” about knowing his staffers weren’t involved in a scheme to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge.
Testifying in the so-called Bridgegate case, Christina Renna disavowed a text message she sent to a colleague as Christie told reporters at a December 2013 press conference that his staff had no knowledge of the politically-motivated plot to cause a traffic jam in the town of Fort Lee.
“It was a poor choice of words. I had no knowledge of whether the governor was lying or not. But it seemed to contradict what I had been told,” Renna testified, according to NJ.com.
Renna’s former boss, Bridget Anne Kelly, and former Port Authority official Bill Baroni face federal corruption charges for their role in creating massive gridlock in Fort Lee by orchestrating lane closures on the George Washington Bridge in September 2013. Federal prosecutors allege the scheme was intended to punish the town’s Democratic mayor for refusing to endorse Christie’s re-election.
Renna testified that she had a phone call with Kelly the night before that December 2013 press conference in which she said Kelly appeared “very nervous” and said she couldn’t “question” what other people had told her was “OK” to do. Renna said she got the impression that Kelly, who was a deputy chief of staff to Christie, and Port Authority officials “knew information about the lane closures.”
That’s what led Renna to text another Christie staffer during the press conference to say the governor “flat out lied about senior staff and Stepien not being involved” in the plot, she testified.
“If emails are found with the subpoena or ccfg emails are uncovered in discovery if it comes to that it could be bad,” Renna wrote at the time. A transcript of that text exchange was made public in August when it was submitted as evidence by Baroni’s lawyer.
Christie has long maintained that he had no involvement in the scheme, and was not aware that it was an act of political revenge until Kelly’s infamous email calling for “some traffic problems in Fort Lee” was made public in January 2014.
Yet both the prosecution and defense in the Bridgegate case agree that Christie knew about the lane closure scheme as it was underway. Several Christie associates have claimed the governor was told about it well before January 2014.
Former Port Authority official David Wildstein testified that he and Baroni told Christie about the plot three days into the lane closures, while former Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien, who’s referenced in Renna’s text conversation, said he told Christie about it the day before the December press conference.
Wildstein struck a plea deal for his involvement in the scheme, while Stepien has denied any involvement and was not charged in the scandal.
