Former Gov Chris Christie is spelling out what he believed was truly Donald Trump’s biggest problem as the criminal trial of the former president for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election looms.
Speaking Monday on CNN, the former New Jersey governor and current 2024 candidate for president reiterated his belief the Department of Justice’s special counsel had been able to charge Mr Trump with four criminal counts related to those efforts thanks to the cooperation of Mark Meadows, Mr Trump’s former and final chief of staff.
Mr Meadows is known to have testified to the grand jury in some manner: CNN reported in June that the former White House chief of staff had made at least one appearance before the panel summoned by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington. What remains unknown is the extent, if any, of Mr Meadows’ cooperation with the DoJ investigation.
“I’ve said all along I think Mark Meadows is already a cooperating witness,” Mr Christie said in his latest interview. “He has all the looks of a cooperating witness, running into coffee shops away from the press.”
Mr Christie added that he expected, given Mr Meadows’s proximity to the president in the final days of the Trump administration and during the peak of Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, that the former chief of staff would have the ability to deliver the “worst testimony” possible for the Trump team’s legal defence.
That sentiment was echoed by John Dean, a former White House counsel under Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
“It would be as important as mine was during Watergate,” he said on CNN the same day. “It would actually be more important, because he was at the scene of so many of the activities that occurred that are now causing Trump the problems he’s got.”
The ex-governor has made his beliefs about Mr Meadows’s supposed cooperation clear for weeks in various media appearances.
He himself was a supporter of Mr Trump in 2016 and 2020, and only broke from Mr Trump’s orbit after the latter refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
The former president is currently facing a staggering and unprecedented 78 criminal charges, four of which relate specifically to his efforts to change the 2020 election results.
DoJ special counsel Jack Smith argues that Mr Trump and his legal team conspired to deprive Americans of their rights when they went ahead with a plan to halt or interfere with the certification of the 2020 election results after failing to prove their case in court and being told, specifically, by experts in their own administration that they were spreading lies and falsehoods.
Mr Trump has denied guilt in this and the other criminal investigations he faces. Despite his professed innocence, his attorneys have said publicly that they expect further criminal charges to be filed over the 2020 election matter imminently.
