Bridgegate verdict: Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly guilty on all counts

* Two Chris Christie's aides were convicted Friday, delivering another blow to the governor and his reputation.

* Attorneys for the defendants promised an immediate appeal, blasted the verdicts and questioned why others weren't charged.

* Christie, in a statement, continues to deny knowing about the plot.

* In an exclusive interview, a juror from the case said she was "appalled" by the governor's statement and thinks he should have been on trial.

* And N.J. lawmakers said they want to relaunch a probe of Christie that focuses on his role in lane closures.

NEWARK -- Two former Christie administration insiders charged in a bizarre scheme of political retaliation against a mayor who refused to endorse the governor for re-election were found guilty Friday on all counts in the long-running Bridgegate saga.

In a seven-week trial that saw their own words used against them, Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly were convicted of helping orchestrate massive traffic tie-ups at the George Washington Bridge in September 2013. The plot was hatched to send a pointed message to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, after he stepped back from his earlier public support of Gov. Chris Christie.

The jury began reading its findings just before 11:30 a.m. and delivered the guilty decisions in rapid fire. Baroni stared at the jury stoically as the verdicts were read. Kelly cried and continued to sob as she heard the word guilty repeated again and again.

Afterward, Kelly hugged her attorney and her mother. Baroni was embraced by his attorney and then went to his parents in the first row of the courtroom.

Kelly and Baroni were charged on nine counts, and faced five of them together. The other four charges were split evenly, two each for the defendants.

U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton set the sentencing date for Feb. 21. Baroni and Kelly face a maximum of 20 years in prison, but are likely to serve far less under federal sentencing guidelines.

Kelly's attorney, Michael Critchley, said his client would appeal.

"Obviously, we're disappointed," Critchley said. "My client is innocent. This was a unique theory of prosecution (and) obviously we're going to appeal."

He called his client "a scapegoat" but he refused to answer any questions regarding Christie, whose name was prominent throughout the trial. Kelly, who did not speak, stood beside Critchley and appeared to be visibly quaking.

A more upbeat Baroni also held a brief press conference outside the courthouse, claiming his innocence. He thanked friends and family here and in Ireland for their support, including members of the gay community.

"I am innocent of these charges," Baroni said. "And I am very, very looking forward to an appeal."

Baroni's attorney, Michael Baldassare, said "it was a disgrace" that the U.S. Attorney's office did not charge "powerful people."

"In keeping with the disgrace that was this trial, one of the things the U.S. Attorney's Office should be ashamed of is where it decided to draw the line on who to charge and who not to charge," Baldassare said. "... They should have had belief in their own case to charge powerful people, and they did not."

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman praised the outcome and said he was "enormously proud" of his staff, members of the FBI and Office of Inspector General.

Pressed by reporters on why others, including Christie, were not charged, Fishman said, "We indicted only the people who we believed we had evidence beyond a reasonable doubt ... to convict in this courthouse."

But he did not close the door on future charges related to the scandal. "I never say what cases I am or am not going to bring," he said.

Christie's office released a statement less than an hour after the verdict.

"Like so many people in New Jersey, I'm saddened by this case and I'm saddened about the choices made by Bill Baroni, Bridget Kelly and David Wildstein," Christie said. "Today's verdict does not change this for me."

The governor's statement went on to reiterate that despite testimony from others during the trial, "I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments."

The jury of seven women and five men heard from 35 witnesses, including both defendants who took the stand on their behalf. But the most damaging evidence might have been the now-infamous "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" email sent by Kelly less than a month before several local access toll lanes at the world's busiest bridge were inexplicably closed for nearly a week in September 2013, leading to paralyzing gridlock on local streets.

The key witness against them was David Wildstein, a Republican operative who was on the stand for eight days. Wildstein acknowledged he was the one who came up with the lane closure idea as a point of leverage against Sokolich, and testified that both Baroni and Kelly helped him put it in play.

Baroni, 44, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Kelly, also 44, who served as a deputy chief of staff to the governor, were indicted more than a year ago after a 16-month federal investigation into the scandal that loomed large over Christie's failed presidential aspirations.

Appointed by Christie to the Port Authority in 2010, Baroni served as the agency's highest ranking New Jersey executive. Kelly, a single mother of four, ran the governor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. The middle man was Wildstein, who served as Kelly's day-to-day contact at the Port Authority after he was hired by Baroni to a $150,000 patronage job in a position created for him.

In his testimony, Wildstein, who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government in an effort to stay out of prison, said his mission was to advance the governor's agenda. He was the one who came up with the lane closure scheme as a possible pressure tactic against Sokolich as far back as 2011. But it was not triggered until 2013, say prosecutors, when Kelly determined that the Fort Lee mayor, a Democrat, was not going to endorse the governor for re-election.

Christie, then already planning to seek the Republican nomination for president, was looking to run up the number of Democrats endorsing him for the governor's race to show he had wide bi-partisan support and Sokolich was on a list of targeted officials.

In August 2013, Kelly sent Wildstein an email that said: "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." And on Sept. 9, 2013, Wildstein said he ordered Port Authority police to move the orange traffic cones setting aside two out of three toll lanes dedicated to Fort Lee traffic. With no warning to local officials or motorists, chaos ensued.

According to Wildstein, he created a cover story to disguise the true purpose of the lane closures, helping draft a Port Authority press release that claimed it was all part of a traffic study looking into ways to reduce congestion on the main approach to the George Washington Bridge toll plaza. Both Baroni and Kelly said they believed there actually was a traffic study.

Denying any knowledge of a plan of political retaliation, Kelly asserted during her four days on the witness stand that other higher-ups in the governor's office were told of the traffic study, long before it played out, and that no one seemed that concerned about it. "It just wasn't a big deal," she testified.

She struggled, however, to explain the language of her emails and texts, including one sent on the day of the lane closures as Wildstein boasted of the heavy traffic: "Is it wrong that I am smiling?"

Kelly also admitted deleting that and other incriminating messages as she came to believe that she was being set up as a scapegoat by administration officials who knew Wildstein's intentions.

Baroni was repeatedly confronted during trial over his failure for a week to respond to a series of emails, texts and phone calls from Sokolich, as the mayor tried to find out from someone in charge at the Port Authority to tell him why the traffic pattern had been changed. When Baroni forwarded the messages to Wildstein, he was instructed with the words "radio silence." The former state senator told the jury that Wildstein convinced him that any communication with the mayor would negatively affect the study at the bridge.

"I've asked myself that question a thousand times," Baroni said when asked why he listened to Wildstein.

Defense attorneys told jurors that the heart of the case rested almost entirely on the credibility of an admitted liar.

"Every road in this case leads through David Wildstein. Every statement, every allegation, every piece of evidence. Every conversation. Every imagined conversation by him. Everything," declared attorney Michael Baldassare, who represents Baroni.

Critchley said Wildstein served as "Chris Christie's Rottweiler" at the Port Authority, who served as the governor's "enforcer" at the powerful bi-state agency.

"He's a manipulator," he said. "He plays games."

But assistant U.S. attorney Lee Cortes, in his summations to the jury, said Baroni, Kelly and Wildstein all saw themselves as the governor's "loyal lieutenants" who were free to use their public jobs to launch political attacks.

The U.S. Attorney's office, though, was faced from the start not only with a flawed witness, but the challenge of convincing a jury that a crime had been committed under circumstances where no money was taken and nobody was hurt, involving a conspiracy to create traffic at a place where traffic is the norm.

The criminal case, built around a rarely used provision of a fraud statute that makes it a crime to "misapply" property of federal aid recipients, charged that Baroni and Kelly intentionally misapplied the property or money of the Port Authority.

The government argued that the shutting down of traffic lanes to play hardball with a reluctant mayor was a misuse of federal funds, turning to a broadly written statue--Section 666 of Title 18 of the United States Code--intended to punish fraud, bribery, theft and embezzlement from agencies that receive federal funds. Prosecutors maintained that by co-opting the Port Authority's resources to execute a personal agenda at odds with the agency's public mission, they did not engage in "politics as usual."

The jury Friday voiced their say in the matter.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or on Facebook. Follow NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter.