Hey, somebody get these Jersey boys a room!
Bridgegate canary David Wildstein testified Friday that he took a lot of ribbing from cronies about a photo that shows him and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gazing at each other with what can only be described as the look of love.
“This is a picture of you and the governor, correct?” Wildstein was asked of the photo, which shows the palsy-walsy pols strolling the Jersey bank of the romantic Kill Van Kull in June 2013.
“Yes,” Wildstein said.
“Gov. Christie seems to have his arm around you, right?” continued defense lawyer Michael Critchley.
“Yes,” Wildstein answered.
The third question from Critchley sent the gallery into peals of laughter.
“You are kind of looking at him admiringly, right? You seem to be smiling, you and the governor,” Critchley said.
Wildstein admitted that he looked so infatuated by Christie that he became the butt of jokes.
“I was teased. They said Gov. Christie and I were looking at each other in an adoring manner,” Wildstein said.
“Who was more adoring? You or the governor,” Critchley asked snarkily.
Wildstein quipped, “I suppose you would have to ask Gov. Christie that.”
The exchange came during Wildstein’s the third day of cross-examination in a Newark federal courtroom as part of the 2013 lane-closure scandal.
Wildstein is the admitted mastermind of the traffic-snarling 2013 closing of Fort Lee, NJ’s access lanes to the George Washington Bridge — designed to punish the town’s mayor for not endorsing Christie for re-election.
Wildstein, who’s testifying under a plea deal, is trying to convince jurors that defendants Bridget Anne Kelly, a former Christie aide, and Bill Baroni, Wildstein’s boss and the governor’s top appointee to the Porth Authority, were equal conspirators in the scheme.
Christie has not been charged, although Wildstein said he was well aware of the plot and laughed during their conversation about it as it was happening.
Kelly and Baroni’s defense lawyers insist that their clients were merely the pawns of political lovebirds Christie and Wildstein, who were photographed thisclose that day during a press conference for a Bayonne Bridge construction project.
Jurors also learned that the head of the PA’s police union, Paul Nunziato, had a pet name for Wildstein: “Meyer Lansky.”
Wildstein said he didn’t mind the moniker, even if Lansky was connected to the Mafia.
“He was a Jewish mob figure with a tough reputation,” Wildstein said.
Still, he added, “I don’t think it would be fair to say I wanted to be considered a mob figure.”
Other evidence shown to jurors Friday also tarred Wildstein as a particularly fervent Christie toady.
An e-mail from September 2012 showed Wildstein plotting to distribute hundreds of ceremonial flags from the 10th anniversary of 9/11 “to VFWs all through Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina” to grease the wheels for Christie’s run for president.
Testimony ended for the week just as Critchley started asking about $100,000 in Port Authority pork — for a “light study” — that Wildstein wanted to dangle in front of Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer in what wound up a failed bid for her Christie reelection endorsement.