Christie Says Trump Cooked His Own Goose By Blabbing About Indictment On Fox News: ‘The Bret Baier Interview Put Him In a Horrible Box’
Presidential candidate Chris Christie said former President Donald Trump hurt his own cause with ill-advised comments to Bret Baier of Fox News.
Appearing on Wednesday’s CNN Primetime, the former governor of New Jersey discussed Trump’s candidacy and his legal woes, which includes a federal indictment for retaining classified documents when he left office. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Last week, Trump sat down with Baier, who peppered him with questions about the indictment, which included an allegation that after he left office, the ex-president bragged about having a classified plan to attack Iran and showed it to a ghostwriter for Mark Meadows’ memoir.
“You’re quoted on the recording saying the document was ‘secret,’ adding that you could have declassified it while you were president, but, quote, ‘Now I can’t you know, this is still secret, highly confidential,’” Baier said. And the indictment cites the recording and the testimony from people in the room saying you showed it to people there that day.”
“It was just the opposite,” Trump insisted.
“You say on tape you can’t declassify,” Baier said. “So why have it?”
“When I said that, I couldn’t declassify it now because I wasn’t president, I never made any bones about that,” Trump replied. “When I’m not president, I can’t declassify.”
Trump then pivoted and suggested he did not actually show anyone such a document. The former president also stated he was too busy to go through boxes of items he was taking to Mar-a-Lago to see which items were government property. That is a change from his previous claim that he had a right to take the documents with him under the Presidential Records Acts.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Christie, a former U.S. Attorney, about Trump’s ever-evolving explanations.
“Why do you think his excuses keep changing for why he had these documents?” Collins asked.
“Because he’s getting cornered,” he replied. “He’s getting cornered and he’ll lie about anything. I think the latest lie is the one that he said just yesterday, right, where he said, ‘I wasn’t really showing that thing. It was bravado.’ He was essentially saying he was lying to the people he was sitting with.”
Christie went on to say Trump did himself in during the Baier interview:
CHRISTIE: And he was cornered by the Bret Baier interview. The Bret Baier interview put him in a horrible box that I don’t think he’s ever gonna be able to get out of.”
COLLINS: Well, he said it wasn’t a document per se.
CHRISTIE: Well, that, but also the bigger problem he has is, Kaitlan, is that he admitted he had the documents. He knew about the grand jury subpoena. But he was ‘too busy’ to go through the boxes to see what was classified and what wasn’t. And he didn’t want to just turn the boxes over because he had golf shirts and golf pants in there. I mean, come on. There’s nobody in America who believes that story.
Watch above via CNN.
