Crime, Politics

Bridgegate Mastermind Skips Prison, Free To Cause Traffic Problems All Over Jersey

The trickster gods always end up walking away.

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David Wildstein, the universally acknowledged scumbag who devised the “Bridgegate” scandal to disrupt traffic and put people at risk just to inconvenience another politician, was sentenced today to three years probation and 500 hours of community service. It’s another example of the criminal justice system performing just like no one ever wanted it to — by giving the mastermind a pass so they can come down hard on his underlings. Hurray!

You’ve got to hand it to Wildstein. Portrayed throughout the affair as the lowest form of dirty dealer, he still managed to get the jury to trust him when he ratted out Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni to save himself. And it wasn’t just the other side! Witnesses for the prosecution joined in by calling him “maniacal” and “a horrible person.” Just a cavalcade of embarrassing revelations:

He was unmasked as the political blogger who once wrote under the pseudonym Wally Edge on a website he founded.

Jesus. Chris Christie has a chronic “anonymous blogger” problem, doesn’t he?

Still, the true trickster gods always get away with it in the end. As my colleague Elie Mystal put it:

Jersey: We’ll keep you out of jail if you cooperate.
Wildstein: If I turn on Christie, it won’t matter where I am, he’ll find me.
Jersey: Oh, we’re not going after Christie! We don’t have what the scientists call “balls.”
Wildstein: Sign my ass up!

Not sure it’s wholly accurate to believe Christie could find a fugitive unless he’s a jelly donut covered in gravy, but this is fundamentally right — Wildstein got to reap all the benefits and none of the risks when the prosecutors decided to keep Christie out of the crosshairs.

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But as we come to the end of Bridgegate, it’s striking how Wildstein’s portrait of a culture of pettiness and revenge politics, where power meant constantly bludgeoning “them” in any way possible, matched up with the worst impulses of an office run by a guy with a raging hard-on for his self-image as a “tough prosecutor.” Back in January 2014, I wrote about how prosecutorial culture is — for a variety of reasons — increasingly fixated on revenge and winning rather than seeking justice and that Christie’s fetishization of that worldview made a scandal like this almost guaranteed:

When this is the model of success that propels you into office, how does one reset? In Christie’s case, he never eschewed this model of leadership. He may well have directly ordered these lane closures, but even if he didn’t, the mentality he has championed in his meteoric rise to prominence invited this sort of behavior. And now we’re supposed to be forgiving when he says his deputy acted alone when plotting to make life hell for someone unwilling to kowtow to the Governor’s overtures?

That’s even if he didn’t know anything about the plan — Wildstein testified that Christie absolutely knew. But we’ll never get to see that case play out. Maybe some Communist in Montclair can ask Christie about it some day. Regardless, Christie built a toxic culture, then played dumb about it while his aides went to jail.

Except for Wildstein.

Actually, as Wildstein walks today after admitting that he was the brains behind this operation, I’m reminded of another line from my 2014 post:

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Plea deals are no longer limited to “going up the chain,” as the masterminds of wrongdoing are now given deals to rat out their underlings for harsher punishment.

Congratulations to David Wildstein. The system works, man.

David Wildstein, a Christie Ally, Is Sentenced to Probation in Bridge Scandal [New York Times]

Earlier: Governor Chris Christie Did What We All Should Have Expected From An Old Prosecutor

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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