Former Chris Christie crony Bridget Kelly on Wednesday was sentenced to serve just over a year behind bars for her role in the Bridgegate scandal.
After her sentence came down, the one-time top aide to the ex-New Jersey governor lashed out at Christie, calling him a “bully” and proclaiming that there was only “one person” powerful enough to have closed the George Washington Bridge — and it wasn’t her.
“Mr. Christie, you are a bully and the days of you calling me a liar and destroying my life are over,” Kelly said in front of the federal courthouse in Newark.
“The truth will be heard — and for the former Governor, that truth will be unescapable, regardless of lucrative television deals or even future campaigns. I plan to make sure of that.”
For taking part in the scheme to create traffic jams on the Hudson River-spanning bridge, Judge Susan David Wigenton sentenced Kelly to serve 13 months in prison, plus a year of probation, and ordered her to pay $14,314 in restitution to the Port Authority and a $2,800 fine.
Prosecutors said Kelly plotted to close approach lanes to the bridge in September 2013 in order create traffic jams to punish Democratic Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, who’d refused to endorse Christie’s re-election bid.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Kelly infamously wrote in an email.
Wearing a dark blue pantsuit with an American flag pin and a pearl necklace and earrings, Kelly held back tears as she told the judge, “I do fully acknowledge my actions were inappropriate,” and apologized to the residents of Fort Lee and its mayor.
But her attorney insisted she was hardly a major player in the scheme, and urged the judge to sentence the single mom to home confinement for the sake of her four kids.
“She was deputy chief of staff for three-and-a-half months,” lawyer Michael Critchley said. “The idea that she would be the mastermind behind this, the one who controlled it … is so counter-intuitive. In my my mind, it almost defies logic.”
The judge cited records and testimony from the trial as proof Kelly did indeed play “a very important role.”
“She didn’t have to be a mastermind, but she played a very important role. Absent that role, this would never have happened,” said Wigenton.
Kelly was previously sentenced to 18 months in the slammer over the scandal, but an appeals court in November nixed two of the nine counts on which she was originally convicted, leading to Wednesday’s re-sentencing.
She was originally charged alongside former Port Authority executive Bill Baroni, who had his sentence reduced from 24 months to 18 months in February for the same reason, and is already serving his term.
Christie was never charged in the scheme.
Critchley suggested to the judge that Kelly surrender to authorities in July — although she and Baroni have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of their convictions.