Chris Christie Shreds Top Trump Official for Purging DOJ Staff: ‘Obliterating His Reputation’

ABC News’s Jonathan Karl asked former federal prosecutor Chris Christie (R) about a statement Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting in Texas.

“There is not a single man or woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions,” Blanche said of federal employees who investigated President Donald Trump. Blanche continued, “And when it comes to the FBI, Director Patel has cleaned house there, too. There isn’t a single man or woman with a gun, federal agent, still in that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump.”

“So, Chris, what he’s saying is that anybody that had anything to do with any of those federal prosecutions of Trump — including like line prosecutors, FBI agents — they’ve all been weeded out,” Karl said. And there’s a lot of personnel.”

“Look, this is the single most damaging thing to the long-term stability of our institutions that has happened in the second Trump term,” Christie said, continuing:

The dismantling of the Department of Justice and the greater partisan activity, as the deputy attorney general himself just admitted in that clip, that the only reason these people were let go was because they followed the direction of the rightfully-appointed attorney general of the United States, confirmed by the United States Senate to conduct investigations. And because they did that, they’re being fired.

Well, what is going to happen to the Department of Justice going forward, regardless of who the president is? Will the American people have faith any longer that any investigation can be independent and free of partisanship. And to go down to CPAC as the deputy attorney general of the United States and brag about that is disgraceful. Disgraceful. And he is going to have to live with the reputation he has developed now over the last two years. Prior to this, Todd Blanche had a very good reputation inside DOJ.

Christie added, “He has — you want to talk about obliterated? We didn’t obliterate the Iran nuclear program, obviously, in June — but he is obliterating his reputation and the reputation of the department that I worked for, and that I really love, and that I’m mourning right now.

Watch the clip above via This Week on ABC News.

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