TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – New Jersey taxpayers have spent more than $10 million for legal services for Gov. Chris Christie’s administration in the George Washington Bridge lane closure case still pending against two former Christie allies.
The updated total became known late Friday after the state released details for the first time on the more than $2 million paid over the past two years to a firm that’s also owed money by the Republican governor’s 2013 re-election campaign.
Invoices released by the state attorney general’s office show the governor’s office spent $2.3 million on digital forensics firm Stroz Friedberg, in addition to the previously disclosed $8 million Christie’s administration spent through December for services from the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher firm.
Two former Christie allies, Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly, have pleaded not guilty to federal charges that they concocted a scheme to partially close the bridge as political payback to a New Jersey mayor who wouldn’t support Christie’s re-election effort. Former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official David Wildstein has pleaded guilty.
Christie, who ended his 2016 presidential campaign this month, has repeatedly denied any prior knowledge of the scheme, and a taxpayer-funded report he commissioned absolved him of wrongdoing.