The George Washington Bridge connects Fort Lee, New Jersey, to Upper Manhattan across the Hudson River. It carries roughly 100 million vehicles per year, making it the most heavily trafficked bridge on Earth. At the time of the scandal, the upper-level toll plaza operated twelve lanes, three of which were dedicated to local Fort Lee traffic entering via Martha Washington Way. This arrangement had been in place for at least thirty years. For the residents of Fort Lee, those three lanes were the difference between a reasonable commute and paralysis. The bridge's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, operated under an informal power-sharing agreement between the governors of both states, each appointing key officials. This dual governance structure would prove central to the scandal: it gave political appointees influence over an agency with enormous operational power.

On the morning of September 9, 2013 - the first day of school in Fort Lee - two of the three dedicated local lanes were closed without warning. No public notice had been given. Fort Lee's mayor, Mark Sokolich, was not informed. Neither were local police or emergency services. The resulting gridlock was immediate and severe, spreading through Fort Lee's residential streets and delaying emergency response times. School buses sat motionless. Parents were late to work. The situation persisted for four days until Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, a New York appointee, ordered the lanes reopened on September 13, calling the closure a 'hasty and ill-informed decision' that could have endangered lives. Port Authority official David Wildstein, a Christie political ally who had ordered the closures, initially claimed they were part of a traffic study. No evidence of any legitimate study was ever produced.

The traffic study explanation collapsed under scrutiny. Emails and text messages obtained by investigators revealed the closures had been coordinated between Kelly, Wildstein, and Bill Baroni, Christie's top appointee at the Port Authority. Kelly's 'time for some traffic problems' email was sent on August 13, 2013, weeks before the closures. The apparent motive was retaliation against Mayor Sokolich for refusing to endorse Christie's reelection campaign. Christie held a marathon press conference in January 2014, denying any knowledge of the scheme and firing Kelly. But the damage to his political ambitions was already done. Once considered a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Christie launched his campaign under the shadow of Bridgegate and suspended it after a disappointing finish in the New Hampshire primary.

In May 2015, federal prosecutors indicted Baroni and Kelly on charges of conspiracy and fraud. Wildstein, who had cooperated with investigators, pleaded guilty and testified against his former colleagues. Both Baroni and Kelly were convicted on all counts in November 2016. But the legal saga took a dramatic turn. On appeal, the Third Circuit Court upheld most convictions but overturned the civil rights counts. Baroni was resentenced to eighteen months; Kelly received thirteen months. Then, in May 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the remaining convictions in Kelly v. United States. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, ruled that the defendants' scheme, while an 'abuse of power,' did not constitute federal fraud because the lane realignment did not aim to obtain money or property. The Bridgegate convictions were vacated - not because the actions were acceptable, but because they did not fit the specific federal statutes under which they had been charged. The scandal that derailed a presidential campaign ended with no one serving a full sentence.