NEWARK -- It was an internal fight between office rivals that went down to a box of Christie Creme donuts.
Christina Renna -- a subordinate of Bridget Anne Kelly, who is now on trial in the Bridgegate scandal -- testified Friday about her increasingly troubled relationship with her boss and a pact with a co-worker to quit after being passed over for a promotion within the governor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Upset by the perceived snub, she complained in a text message. "I'm super pissed off. And I'm a grudge holder," she wrote.
"I was upset and I was hurt by it," she testified.
Then came the incident with the donuts. Renna testified how a group of interns was brought into the office and held a bake-off contest as a team-building exercise. They were judged on creativity.
One of the interns brought in a doctored box of Krispy Kreme donuts that said: "Christie Creme. Expanding Nationwide in 2016."
After a photo and story appeared on NJ.com and in The Star-Ledger, Renna said the governor and other high-level staff members "all freaked out" and came down on Kelly.
But Renna found out the intern wasn't reprimanded.
"She won the [expletive] contest," she complained to a co-worker. "She didn't get into trouble."
Renna says her remarks that the governor "lied" were a "poor choice of words," but details the chaos at play as the Bridgegate scandal first came to light.
Renna's testimony in the trial of Kelly and Bill Baroni, a former Port Authority executive, took on the feeling of an episode of "Real Housewives of New Jersey," with talk of grudges, sabotage and expressions of feigned hate.
Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to the governor, and Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority, are charged with plotting to cause major traffic tie-ups in Fort Lee in a scheme of political retribution. Prosecutors say the two sought to punish Mayor Mark Sokolich after he declined to endorse Christie for re-election.
Renna, a witness for the prosecution, testified Thursday of her tenure with the governor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs or IGA, ostensibly a one-stop outreach agency to serve as a liaison with elected officials that was used instead to line up support and endorsements for the governor's 2013 re-election campaign in anticipation of his presidential run.
Now a business lobbyist, she worked under Kelly--once considered a close friend--but came to see her as someone who was trying to put her "in a cubbyhole," fearing she would name a rival as her second-in command.
She also described Kelly as someone who was not a "decision maker."
In her direct examination by prosecutors on Thursday, Renna told the jury about an apparently incriminating email she had sent to Kelly in the immediate aftermath of the September 2013 lane closures at the George Washington Bridge. She said a junior staff member had spoken to Sokolich who complained he has no idea why Port Authority decided to shut the lanes, but there was a feeling in town that it was government retribution for something.
"He simply can't understand why that would be the case however, because he has always been so supportive of the governor," Renna wrote to Kelly. "The mayor feels he is about to lose control of the situation and that he looks like a [expletive] idiot."
She testified that Kelly wrote back "good."
"Do me a favor and get rid of that," she said Kelly told her in a phone call.
David Wildstein gave new insights into who in Christie's inner circle knew about the Bridgegate scandal.
On cross-examination Friday, defense attorney Michael Critchley, who represents Kelly, tried to portray Renna as a woman with an agenda, looking to hurt her former supervisor by plotting behind her back to make her look bad.
Critchley asked if Renna wanted to sabotage her.
"That's your words, sir," she responded.
The attorney persisted, but Renna insisted the plan was only to convince people to "turn their backs" on Kelly.
Critchley also returned to the incriminating email, noting that Renna did not delete it until she heard Christie at a press conference declare that there was no evidence that senior staff knew in advance about the reason for the toll lane closures at the bridge.
"Isn't it a coincidence that you delete that email shortly after the governor says there is no evidence of retribution. And you have that evidence?" asked Critchley.
Renna, who earlier had taken back a statement as a "poor choice of words" when she texted a friend charging that the governor had lied at the press conference about whether senior staff knew, said she could not recall when she deleted the email, and denied suggestions by Critchley that she was motivated by fears that it would hurt the efforts of her husband's company to get a permit to build a controversial gas pipeline through the environmentally sensitive Pinelands region if the email surfaced.
Renna said her relationship with Kelly was complicated.
"You said you hated her," said Critchley.
"I never hated Bridget. I was angry," she replied.