http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/nyregion/bill-baroni-bridgegate-trial.html 2016-10-17 19:38:51 Ex-Christie Aide Says He Was Duped About Bridge Lane Closings Bill Baroni, who is accused of approving the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, then covering them up, says he was misled by a Port Authority executive. === NEWARK — The simple question, delivered early in the day, went right to the heart of a contorted political plot. Why, Bill Baroni’s lawyer asked him here in federal court, didn’t you call Mayor Mark Sokolich back? “I have asked myself that question a thousand times,” said Mr. Baroni, sitting on the stand Monday morning, and shaking his head. “I think of it first thing in the morning, the last thing at night.” “David said to me, ‘Let me handle it,’” Mr. Baroni continued, then grimaced and closed his eyes. “I listened to him. I have regretted it ever since.” Mr. Baroni, once a top official in the administration of Gov. “David” is David Wildstein, once one of Mr. Baroni’s closest friends, who worked with him at the Over eight days on the stand here earlier in the trial, Mr. Wildstein described Mr. Baroni as being intimately involved in the scheme, even deciding that the lane closings would start the first day of school in September 2013, to maximize the catastrophic traffic jam that would, and did, ensue. Mr. Wildstein described Mr. Baroni as the champion of the traffic study lie. And Mr. Baroni, he said, bragged to Mr. Christie about the scheme at a Sept. 11 memorial service, telling him that there were enormous traffic jams in Fort Lee and that Mr. Sokolich was not having his calls returned. The prosecution has displayed records of increasingly panicked phone calls, emails and text messages from Mr. Sokolich to Mr. Baroni, reporting public safety problems, with emergency vehicles stuck in gridlock, and challenges getting children stuck on buses to school. “It’s maddening,” the mayor texted Mr. Baroni. Mr. Wildstein and Mr. Baroni responded with what they called, in other emails displayed by prosecutors, “Radio silence.” Mr. Wildstein testified that Mr. Baroni delighted in the mayor’s frustration, so much that his mocking of the mayor’s “it’s maddening” message became an inside joke. But taking the stand here Monday, Mr. Baroni, a former New Jersey state senator, told a starkly different story, saying Mr. Wildstein had duped him, too, into believing the lane closings were a legitimate traffic study, one that was important to the governor, and that he had baldly lied to him that there was no punishment involved. Confronted over and over with the evidence against him — texts, emails, phone records and photographs — Mr. Baroni said repeatedly, and regretfully, “I believed David Wildstein.”