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President Donald Trump escalated his feud with Chris Christie last night, suggesting a renewed investigation into Bridgegate after the former governor criticized Trump on a Sunday news show.

Trump said Christie sacrificed his aides amid the 2013 scandal, including Bridget Anne Kelly, his former deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, a top official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The president’s threat is likely toothless given the five-year statute of limitations on most federal crimes.

“Do you remember the way he lied about the dangerous and deadly closure of the George Washington Bridge in order to stay out of prison, at the same time sacrificing people who worked for him, including a young mother, who spent years trying to fight off the vicious charges against her,” Trump wrote. “Chris refused to take responsibility for these criminal acts.”

Allies of Christie closed lanes of the George Washington Bridge in an effort to cause traffic jams in Fort Lee, an act of retribution against Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat who refused to endorse Christie in that year’s gubernatorial election. Kelly and Baroni were both convicted in the case, but the Supreme Court overruled those convictions.

Christie, who has denied involvement in the scandal, did not return a request for comment. Several witnesses in the case said Christie was aware of the lane-closure plan before it started.

The former governor, an ABC News contributor and former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, said on ABC’s This Week that Trump is attempting to turn the Justice Department into “his personal legal representation.” Christie largely defended the FBI raids of Trump critic John Bolton’s home, noting a judge would have had to sign off on warrants, but called the classified-documents investigation into Bolton hypocritical.

“I think it’s kind of funny to hear the president talk the way he does about Bolton and classified information, yet when he had classified information, the same rules didn’t apply,” Christie said, referring to the now-dropped indictment of Trump in a classified-documents case.

Trump and Christie were close for years, and the latter endorsed Trump after suspending his 2016 campaign for president. Their relationship deteriorated after the president’s 2020 re-election loss, however, and grew vicious after Christie spent much of his 2024 presidential campaign attacking Trump.

And even though the pair were allies for some time, Sunday’s social media post was not the first in which Trump accused Christie of being involved in Bridgegate. In 2015, the then-candidate alleged Christie “totally knew about it” at a rally in South Carolina.

David Wildstein, the editor of the New Jersey Globe, pleaded guilty to a pair of charges in the Bridgegate case and served as a witness in the prosecutions of Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, and the guilty plea was later dismissed. Wildstein was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.

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