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Indicted ex-official seeks dismissal in Bridgegate case

NEWARK, N.J. - Two former allies to Gov. Christie continued to fight criminal charges in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure case Thursday, and one defense attorney said he had issued subpoenas requesting the personal phones of the Republican governor and some of his former top aides.

NEWARK, N.J. - Two former allies to Gov. Christie continued to fight criminal charges in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure case Thursday, and one defense attorney said he had issued subpoenas requesting the personal phones of the Republican governor and some of his former top aides.

Appearing in federal court for oral arguments, an attorney for Bill Baroni, a former Christie appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told a judge that his client had been deprived of due process and the charges should therefore be dismissed.

Attorney Michael Baldassare told U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton that the federal government had improperly indicted Baroni without reviewing text messages exchanged between Christie and a former top aide, Regina Egea, that both said they had deleted.

The text messages were exchanged in December 2013 while Port Authority personnel testified before a legislative committee investigating the lane closures, according to phone records reviewed by the panel.

Baldassare also said prosecutors should have reviewed emails between David Wildstein, a former Port Authority official who has pleaded guilty in the case, and Michael Drewniak, Christie's former press secretary.

Egea, Drewniak, and Christie have not been accused of wrongdoing.

Baroni has issued subpoenas to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm representing the governor's office, to obtain the phones and messages, Baldassare said.

"I want the governor's phone," Baldassare told reporters after the 90-minute hearing, literally taking a reporter's cellphone to demonstrate his intentions.

Attorney Randy Mastro of Gibson Dunn did not return a request for comment.

Egea headed the unit that oversaw the Port Authority at the time and later served as Christie's chief of staff. She recently left the administration to work in the private sector.

Baldassare also told the judge that he had received documents in the last 10 days that buttress his assertion that prosecutors obtained the grand jury indictment without reviewing the full body of evidence.

"As we peel back the onion in this case, it gets worse and worse," he told Wigenton.

A federal grand jury last May indicted Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie's former deputy chief of staff, and Baroni on charges of conspiring to misuse property of an organization (the Port Authority) that received at least $10,000 in federal aid; wire fraud; and depriving the residents of Fort Lee, Bergen County, of the right to "localized travel" free from restrictions "unrelated to legitimate government objectives."

Prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman say Kelly and Baroni conspired with Wildstein to cause massive traffic jams at the bridge for four days in September 2013. Their objective, prosecutors say, was to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, for his refusal to endorse Christie's reelection that year.

Wigenton said she would issue a ruling "as quickly" as she could. Her questioning did not suggest that she was inclined to dismiss the case.

For example, an attorney for Baroni said the indictment should be tossed because it was obtained using testimony she said was immunized to a legislative committee investigating the lane closures in 2013.

Wigenton noted that the committee's lawyer had written to Baroni that his testimony and document production did not confer immunity. Baroni's attorney, Jennifer Mara, described that as irrelevant.

Wigenton also questioned the defense's objection to the civil rights charge. Michael Critchley Jr., an attorney for Kelly, told the judge that there was no constitutional right to travel, and that in any case, prosecutors were asserting a right to be "free from traffic and free from inconvenience."

"Do we ignore the alleged basis upon which this traffic was caused?" Wigenton asked, referring to the alleged plot to punish Sokolich.

Critchley said the judge should consider the effect of the alleged offense: the bridge was still open, even if some lanes were closed.

Even if a right to localized travel did exist, Critchley said, it was not "clearly established" and therefore Kelly could not have violated it.

David Feder, an assistant U.S. attorney, cited case law and said the defense's argument was nonsense.

"They knew what they were doing was wrong," he said as Kelly and Baroni sat in the courtroom.

Feder said the government did not need to show that the right to localized travel was literally mentioned in the Constitution. Rather, he said, "we have to show they did that which the Constitution forbids."

The question for the jury, he said, will be whether the "time, place, and manner" of the alleged wrongdoing "shocks the conscience."

Feder also rejected the notion that the indictment merely alleged that Kelly and Baroni had inconvenienced Fort Lee residents.

Kelly, Baroni, and Wildstein chose the first day of school to implement their plan, closed the lanes at morning rush hour, gave no warning to local officials, and did not respond to the mayor's inquiries, Feder argued.

From the outset, Kelly, Baroni, and Wildstein also concocted the cover story of a traffic study to explain what happened, Feder said.

Speaking with reporters after the hearing, Fishman, the U.S. attorney, said he believed this was the first criminal case in which prosecutors had invoked the right to localized travel.

The bridge scandal exploded in January 2014, when documents obtained via subpoena by New Jersey lawmakers showed Kelly had sent Wildstein an email a month before the lane closures that read, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

The scandal spawned investigations that politically wounded Christie, whose bid for the GOP presidential nomination this year never gained traction. Christie, who dropped out of the race in February, has said he was not involved in the lane closures.

The trial is to begin in September.

aseidman@phillynews.com

856-779-3846@AndrewSeidman