Based on Wikipedia: Fort Lee lane closure scandal

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

With those eight words, sent via email on August 13, 2013, a deputy chief of staff in the New Jersey governor's office set in motion one of the most bizarre political revenge schemes in American history. What followed would destroy presidential ambitions, send political operatives to prison, and eventually reach the United States Supreme Court—all over traffic cones.

The Weapon: A Bridge

The George Washington Bridge isn't just any bridge. It's the busiest motor-vehicle bridge in the world, a double-decker colossus connecting New Jersey to Manhattan. Every morning, tens of thousands of commuters funnel through its toll plazas, and the margin between "heavy traffic" and "complete gridlock" is razor-thin.

At the main toll plaza on the upper level, twelve lanes processed the crush of vehicles. Three of those lanes, positioned at the far right of the plaza, had been reserved for over thirty years for local traffic entering from Fort Lee, New Jersey—a small borough of about 35,000 people that sits right at the bridge's doorstep. Movable traffic cones separated these local lanes from the heavier highway traffic.

It was an arrangement that made sense. Fort Lee residents needed to get to work too, and without dedicated lanes, they'd be stuck behind the endless stream of Interstate 95 traffic. The system worked. Until someone decided to weaponize it.

The Target: A Mayor Who Didn't Play Ball

Chris Christie was riding high in 2013. The Republican governor of New Jersey had cultivated a persona as a straight-talking, bipartisan dealmaker. His approval ratings were soaring. National pundits were already handicapping his chances in the 2016 presidential race.

Part of Christie's political strategy involved collecting endorsements from Democratic mayors. In a blue state like New Jersey, these crossover endorsements burnished his bipartisan credentials. His team aggressively courted local officials of both parties.

Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, declined to endorse Christie for reelection.

This was not, by any normal political calculus, a major blow. Sokolich was the mayor of a small borough. Christie would go on to win reelection by more than twenty points. The endorsement of Fort Lee's mayor was, in the grand scheme of things, trivial.

But someone in Christie's orbit took it personally.

The Plot Unfolds

The cast of characters reads like a political thriller. David Wildstein, a local politician and political blogger who had known Christie since high school, had been installed at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—the bi-state agency that operates the bridge—as director of interstate capital projects. Bill Baroni, Christie's appointed deputy executive director at the agency, had helped bring Wildstein aboard based on Christie's own referral and recommendation.

Bridget Anne Kelly was Christie's deputy chief of staff. It was Kelly who sent that fateful eight-word email to Wildstein on August 13, 2013.

Wildstein's response was two words: "Got it."

On September 6, Wildstein instructed Robert Durando, the manager of the George Washington Bridge, not to tell anyone in Fort Lee about an upcoming lane closure. Not even the police. When Durando questioned the order—he'd never been told to keep host town officials in the dark in his thirty-five-year career—Wildstein explained that notification "would impact the study." He wanted to see what would "naturally happen."

There was no study.

The First Day of School

Monday, September 9, 2013, was the first day of the school year in Fort Lee. Parents were driving their children to school. Buses were running their routes. And that morning, without warning, two of the three dedicated local toll lanes at the Fort Lee entrance to the bridge simply closed.

The traffic cones were moved. The lanes were reallocated to highway traffic. Fort Lee's commuters—parents with kids, workers trying to reach Manhattan, anyone trying to get anywhere—were suddenly funneled into a single lane.

The gridlock was immediate and catastrophic.

Traffic backed up through the borough's streets. School buses couldn't complete their routes. Children arrived late. Parents sat trapped in their cars, watching the minutes tick by.

And then the emergencies started.

When Minutes Matter

In at least one instance, emergency medical workers were forced to abandon their ambulance and respond on foot because the traffic was so severe. Emergency responders were delayed nearly an hour reaching a man experiencing chest pains.

Florence Genova, a ninety-one-year-old woman, suffered cardiac arrest. Paramedics responding to the 9-1-1 call were delayed by the traffic. She died.

Her daughter later told The New York Times that she wanted to stay out of the political firestorm. "It was just her time," she said of her elderly mother. But the question of whether the delay contributed to her death would hang over the scandal.

Within hours of the closure, Port Authority officials were being warned that the delays posed a threat to public safety. At 9:29 that morning, a special assistant emailed Bill Baroni about an "urgent matter of public safety in Fort Lee." Fort Lee's borough administrator emailed the agency's director of government and community relations, noting that police and emergency departments had received no advance notice. At 11:24 a.m., another email informed both Wildstein and Baroni that police and ambulances were having difficulty responding to emergencies, citing two specific incidents: a missing child and a cardiac arrest.

The warnings were ignored.

"Is it wrong that I am smiling?"

The lane closures continued for four days. On Tuesday, Mayor Sokolich texted Baroni directly: "Presently we have four very busy traffic lanes merging into only one toll booth... bigger problem is getting kids to school. Help please. It's maddening."

Kelly and Wildstein exchanged text messages about the mayor's plea. "Is it wrong that I am smiling?" Kelly asked.

"No," Wildstein replied.

"I feel badly about the kids," Kelly wrote. "I guess."

Wildstein's response was chilling: "They are the children of Buono voters"—a reference to Barbara Buono, Christie's Democratic opponent in the upcoming November election.

Meanwhile, Mayor Sokolich couldn't get anyone at the Port Authority to return his calls. When Kelly emailed Wildstein asking about his response to the mayor, Wildstein wrote back: "Radio silence."

The Fort Lee police chief, Keith Bendul, eventually reached Durando, the bridge manager, who asked for a meeting—but not at the Port Authority office. In a nearby municipal parking lot. "I thought it was cloak and dagger," Bendul later testified. Durando spoke of the supposed traffic study, and Bendul demanded it end, citing safety problems. "I told him bluntly that if anybody dies, I'm going to tell those people to sue him and everybody at the Port Authority."

A nervous Durando suggested the mayor should contact Baroni. He added that if anyone asked whether the meeting had occurred, he would deny it.

The Intervention

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as its name suggests, is overseen by both states. Under an informal power-sharing agreement, New Jersey's governor chose the chairman of the board and the deputy executive director, while New York's governor chose the vice-chairman and the executive director.

Patrick Foye was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's man at the agency. He was the executive director. And by Thursday, September 12, he'd caught wind of something deeply wrong.

John Ma, Foye's chief of staff, had tipped off a local newspaper columnist. "I told him, off the record, that to my knowledge there was no traffic study and that the lane closures had been ordered by David Wildstein." When the columnist contacted the Port Authority asking about the delays, the inquiry appeared on an internal media-contact report. Foye saw it.

On Friday morning, September 13, Foye sent a blistering email at 7:44 a.m. to senior Port Authority officials, including Baroni and David Samson, Christie's appointed chairman of the board. He ordered the lanes reopened immediately.

Foye called the decision to close the lanes "hasty and ill-advised." He said it violated agency policy and long-standing custom. Most damningly, he wrote that he believed the closures "violate Federal Law and the laws of both States."

The lanes reopened. The gridlock ended. But the scandal was just beginning.

The Cover Story

When questions about the lane closures surfaced, the Christie administration had an explanation ready: it was a traffic study. The Port Authority was testing whether Fort Lee really needed those dedicated lanes, or whether the traffic could be handled differently.

Bill Baroni testified before the New Jersey Assembly Transportation Committee in November 2013, solemnly explaining the traffic study rationale. He was authoritative. He was detailed. He was lying.

There had been no traffic study planned before the closures. There was no formal methodology. There were no advance notifications to any of the agencies that would normally be involved. The "study" was invented after the fact to justify what had already been done.

Port Authority engineers, examining the data after the closures, found exactly what common sense would suggest: the delays imposed on local traffic vastly exceeded any time savings for highway traffic. An internal PowerPoint presentation estimated that local drivers endured an extra 2,800 vehicle-hours of delay each morning, while I-95 traffic saved only 966 vehicle-hours. It was a net loss for everyone.

The Dam Breaks

In January 2014, documents obtained by investigators and journalists blew the cover story apart. The "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" email became public. So did the text message exchanges—the smiling, the callousness about children, the "radio silence" toward the mayor.

Christie held a marathon press conference, insisting he had no knowledge of the plot. He fired Bridget Kelly. Bill Baroni had already resigned. David Wildstein had resigned in December.

The scandal consumed New Jersey politics. Federal prosecutors got involved. A U.S. Attorney named Paul Fishman led an investigation that resulted in a nine-count indictment against Kelly, Baroni, and Wildstein.

The Trial

Wildstein pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against his former colleagues. His testimony painted a devastating picture.

According to Wildstein, Christie had been aware of the lane closures as they happened. At a September 11 commemoration at the World Trade Center site—Christie, Wildstein, Baroni, and Samson were all photographed there together—Baroni had sarcastically told the governor: "Governor, there is a tremendous amount of traffic in Fort Lee, please know Mayor Sokolich is frustrated he can't get his calls returned."

Christie, Wildstein testified, responded: "I imagine they wouldn't be getting their calls returned."

Baroni then said Wildstein would monitor the traffic. Christie's response, according to Wildstein: "Well, I'm sure Mr. Edge wouldn't be involved in anything political." Then he laughed. ("Wally Edge" was the pseudonymous persona Wildstein had used for his political blog.)

Both the prosecution and the defense in the trial argued that Christie knew what was happening. This was the first time Christie had been officially accused of contemporaneous knowledge of the plot. He was never charged.

In November 2016, Kelly and Baroni were found guilty on all counts. Wildstein received probation for his cooperation. David Samson, Christie's Port Authority chairman, pleaded guilty to an unrelated felony—a conspiracy charge stemming from a different corrupt scheme that federal investigators had uncovered while digging into Bridgegate.

Presidential Dreams, Crushed

When Bridgegate first erupted in January 2014, Chris Christie was the frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in many polls. He was the governor of a blue state who had just won reelection by twenty-two points. He was seen as electable, pragmatic, a candidate who could expand the Republican coalition.

The scandal changed everything.

The image of Christie as a competent executive was replaced by an image of petty vindictiveness and chaos. Even if Christie himself hadn't ordered the lane closures, his closest aides had. What did that say about his management? His judgment? His character?

Christie ran for president anyway. He dropped out after a dismal showing in the New Hampshire primary in February 2016. Later, he was passed over as Donald Trump's running mate. Christie himself described Bridgegate as "a factor" in that decision.

The scandal that began with traffic cones had derailed a presidential campaign.

The Supreme Court Has Its Say

But the story wasn't over. Kelly and Baroni appealed their convictions. In 2019, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, known as Kelly v. United States.

The legal question was narrow but important: had the defendants actually committed fraud?

The federal fraud statutes that Kelly and Baroni were convicted under require that the defendant obtain "money or property" through their scheme. The prosecutors had argued that the lane closures defrauded the government of the Port Authority's property—specifically, the use of the bridge lanes themselves.

In May 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. The justices ruled that Kelly and Baroni couldn't be convicted of fraud because they hadn't actually obtained any money or property for themselves. The lane realignment was a regulatory decision, not a theft. The justices were careful to note that the defendants' conduct was wrong—politically motivated, deceptive, harmful—but it wasn't the kind of wrong that these particular federal statutes were designed to punish.

The convictions were overturned. Bill Baroni, who had already begun serving his federal prison sentence, was released.

What Bridgegate Revealed

The Fort Lee lane closure scandal was, in many ways, a perfectly absurd political scandal. It wasn't about money or sex or espionage. It was about traffic. Someone closed some lanes on a bridge to make a mayor's life difficult, and everything spiraled from there.

But in its absurdity, Bridgegate revealed something important about the nature of political power and its abuses. The scheme worked precisely because the George Washington Bridge is such a critical piece of infrastructure. Controlling access to it meant controlling, for a few days, the lives of thousands of people—their commutes, their children's ability to get to school, their access to emergency services.

The callousness in those text messages—"They are the children of Buono voters"—exposed a mindset where ordinary citizens were acceptable collateral damage in political games. The people stuck in traffic weren't people; they were pawns, or obstacles, or simply not worth considering.

And the Supreme Court's decision, while legally sound, left an uncomfortable truth exposed: sometimes the worst abuses of power don't fit neatly into criminal statutes. Kelly and Baroni did something wrong. Everyone agreed on that. But "wrong" and "criminal" are not always the same thing.

The children of Fort Lee still got to school late that week. The ambulances were still delayed. Florence Genova still died. But in the end, no one went to prison for Bridgegate.

The traffic cones were put back where they belonged. The lanes reopened. And Chris Christie never became president.