Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ® compared new charges against former President Trump that accuse him of working with Mar-a-Lago employees to delete surveillance footage at the club to the tactics of the fictionalized Corleone organized crime family.

“It appears that way,” Christie said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” when asked whether he sees a clear-cut case for obstruction of justice.

It’s pretty brazen. These guys were acting like the Corleones with no experience. I mean, the day after a grand jury subpoena is served, which includes the surveillance tapes, they go down to Mar-a-Lago, and Walt Nauta appears to be the Fredo of this family. They sent him to go down there. And they sent him to go and delete it. This is bad stuff,” Christie continued.

A superseding indictment against former President Trump included three additional charges related to the former president’s alleged efforts to work with employees to delete security camera footage in the case examining his willful retention of classified documents, bringing the total number of charges to 40.

Christie, a former Trump ally-turned-critic and now 2024 GOP contender, pushed back on the claim from fellow Republican challenger Vivek Ramaswamy that there was no underlying potential crime committed – and that this was simply an alleged “process crime.”

“You can’t say there was no underlying potential crime here. This was the withholding of confidential classified information from the government after 18 months of asking Donald Trump to return it voluntarily. Not only did he not return it, he lied about having it. This is not the kind of thing we could do,” Christie said.

Christie, a former federal prosecutor, noted the potential harmful effects “on our troops and our intelligence officers by having this stuff just laying around, and him willy-nilly showing it to whoever he feels like, to be a show off on the back deck at Mar-a-Lago.”

“This is not what a former president should be doing. And it’s certainly not something that someone who wants to be president should be doing,” Christie said.

  • hoodlem@hoodlem.me
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    1 year ago

    Christie was one of the first to drop out of the 2016 primary race in support of Trump. He’s also responsible for essentially ending Rubio’s campaign right in the middle of a debate.

    His early Trump support will always define him to me. With that said I’m glad he is actually speaking truth now.

    • fades@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yes same here, Cruz too.

      These guys are essentially attempting to employ the Charlie strategy. Play both sides so you’ll always come out on top! When the winds shifted, so too did the sails of the likes of Christie, Cruz and the rest of the pathetic American conservative/fascist wing.

      He is speaking truth because he feels the shift in the winds again, they have been flip flopping like this since at least 2016. All it takes is for Trump to call your wife ugly I guess lmao

    • bauhaus@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      He’s also responsible for essentially ending Rubio’s campaign right in the middle of a debate.

      that was hilarious, though, and he had it coming

      With that said I’m glad he is actually speaking truth now.

      yeah, but it’s entirely self-serving and motivated by spite for a man that has been making fat jokes for the past 7 years at his expense, not by altruism or any interest in justice or doing the right thing.

    • cia@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Christie doesn’t know what he’s doing!”

  • RichardBonham@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Trump’s behavior has always modeled organized crime. Insisting on loyalty above all, surrounded himself with lawyers, commingling funds, grabbing people’s mobile phones to use without leaving a record of the call on his own number, operating only through family…

  • Wayward@compuverse.uk
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    1 year ago

    Christ Christie? The dude who used Sandy and NJ resources to attack those who didn’t play by his rules, licked Trump’s lifted boots and constantly acts like he’s the only grown up in the room while looking like he ATE the grown up in the room?

    As a former NJ resident, fuck him and the titanium reinforced horse he rode in on.

    • UnfortunateTwist@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The same Chris Christie who allegedly laughed when he was told about the traffic havoc of closing down 2 lanes on the George Washington Bridge?

      • Wayward@compuverse.uk
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        The same Chris Christie who shut down the state but spent a holiday weekend in a state park / beach that was closed to the public because of the state shut down?

      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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        The same bridge closure that lead to a patient dying in the back of an ambulance because they couldn’t get through?

    • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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      I don’t want Christie to win anything, but I do want him to tear Trump down some more. The enemy of my enemy is welcome to keep attacking my enemy.

    • P1r4nha@feddit.de
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      Yes fuck him. But it’s good there’s at least one prominent Republican voice tied to reality. Fucking low bar met by an asshole, but he’s better than the rest.

      • Wayward@compuverse.uk
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        Nope. Fuck him too. He’s only tied to reality now because he’s trying to distance himself as the DoJ is preparing to drop the hammer on Trump. This is Trumps transition manager. He helped move him into the White House, he doesn’t get to slink away from that.

    • threesaken@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Fun with Markdown! (R) in the article to show he’s a Republican gets turned into ® when rendered in Lemmy/KBin

      • MJBrune@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I typically like markdown but that choice is so 2000-late. We have unicode support for everything now. We don’t need (R) to convert to ®. Look we have all sorts of unicode 👋👍😄😊😂🤣❤💖😜. Why does markdown think it needs to reinvent the wheel here? It absolutely needs updating.