New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was told about politically motivated traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge while they were crippling a town whose mayor refused to back his re-election, a US prosecutor said for the first time since the scandal became public.
The assertion came on the first day of the trial of Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, who are accused of deliberately closing access lanes to the bridge to paralyse traffic in Fort Lee, New Jersey, over several mornings during the first week of school in September 2013.
Prosecutors say the goal was to retaliate against Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat who refused to cross party lines to back Christie, a Republican.
A former Port Authority official, David Wildstein, pleaded guilty and is expected to testify that he conspired with Kelly and Baroni to punish Sokolich and cover up their crimes until the scheme came to light weeks later.
In his opening statement, a prosecutor said today that Wildstein and Baroni spoke to the Governor on the third day of the traffic jams during a September 11 memorial at the World Trade Centre in New York.