By Editorial Board
Asbury Park Press
Jury selection will begin Thursday in the trial of two former senior staff members of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration: Bill Baroni, former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff.
Both were indicted in May 2015 on charges of fraud, conspiracy and civil rights violations for their alleged role in the politically motivated George Washington Bridge lane-closure scheme three years ago this month.
But Baroni and Kelly won’t be the only ones on trial. So, too, will be Gov. Chris Christie, whose insistence that he had nothing to do with ordering the lane closures and knew nothing about them until long after the lane closings occurred, likely will either be confirmed or revealed as a lie during the course of the testimony.
Adding even more interest to one of New Jersey’s most highly anticipated trials in years will be the presence of Kelly’s high-powered defense attorney, Michael Critchley, whose exploits were detailed in Tuesday’s Press (“Feds may have hard case to prove in Bridgegate trial.”)
Among the defendants he has cleared were Michael “Mad Dog” Taccetta and 19 other reputed members of the Lucchese crime family, and a Newark police officer who was found, gun in hand, standing in his former bedroom by the naked body of his ex-wife’s lover.
