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Chris Christie Tells Legalweek All About How Much He Loves Trump Despite Giving Him COVID

That's quite a persona Chris Christie's testing out.

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For the final day of this February Legalweek, the organizers invited former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, eager to take any opportunity to distance himself from the Trump administration that he’d aggressively endorsed and actively assisted throughout the campaign. But life comes at you fast, and Christie has clearly decided that there’s a lane for “Republican who doesn’t believe QAnon” and he’s sprinting toward it. That’s what made this keynote so eagerly anticipated… how would Christie keep every plate spinning in his mission to strike just the right amount of distance from Trump without dooming his career? And broken plates are funny.

Why give someone who just facilitated a four-year concerted assault on the rule of law any platform at all, let alone a legal technology keynote that has nothing to do with legal technology? Presumably this was a “balancing” move to bring on a Republican after talking with Stacey Abrams on the first day of the show and Rudy wasn’t available. But the problem with playing in the middle of a road is that you’re going to get hit and Christie put on a game effort at times before launching into mendacity because he simply cannot help himself.

As for his brush with COVID, Christie said that he diligently wore a mask for months but took it off at the White House while prepping Trump for the debates. For him, the lesson is that there is nowhere safe from the virus. For the rest of us, the lesson is that a place that openly mocked public health precautions wasn’t safe from the virus, which wasn’t be surprising. Natural and logical consequences and all.

But throwing him into a life-threatening situation isn’t enough to dampen his affection for his old buddy Donald! Though we’re certainly going to test that before this talk is over.

But first, Christie has some disingenuous garbage he needs to share.

For four years Democrats complained about executive orders and 15 days in there’s already triple the number of executive orders.

This is a lie. Trump issued 220 executive orders and Biden’s issued 25. The “triple” number refers to Biden issuing triple the number in his first days in office except these executive orders are almost entirely just reversals of Trump’s executive orders, which is the only mechanism available for doing that. This is where an interviewer needs to say, “Hey, that’s a lie and you should know better.” Instead, Christie just rolled into some blather about how he wishes Biden would be more bipartisan.

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Bipartisan in the way that, Christie reminds, he had to be with the New Jersey legislature — a wild revision of his entire history as governor.

He continued hitting the GOP talking points by complaining bitterly about election results not being counted on election night and demanding states prevent that going forward. To Christie’s mind, all of the misinformation about voter fraud grew out of the lengthy delay in getting results. Which is partially true, except he elides the part where Republican legislators refused to allow officials to process absentee ballots early for the express purpose of creating the misconception that the election was being “stolen.” This isn’t a mystery — it was done completely in the open! Moreover, as Professor Rick Hasen has explained repeatedly this cycle, the problem is the mentality that America deserves real-time, instantaneous election results because in reality votes are never fully counted immediately, it’s just that decision desks are skilled at making projections. Everyone who has ever really worked in politics knows this, but it’s the sort of thing a disingenuous actor can lie about in speeches to fire up low-information voters.

When pressed about Trump’s impact on the Republican Party going forward, Christie offered that “I think the core of the Republican Party is still the same. Appoint conservative judges.”

You’ve got to appreciate the unguarded honesty that — fundamentally — confirmed that the “core of the Republican Party” has definitely changed, at least in terms of its priorities. Anyone alive during the Reagan administration or who watched George H.W. Bush drummed out of office for daring to backtrack on “no new taxes” would have thought the “core” of the GOP was a low tax, hands off government. But it’s not. Recognizing its dwindling electoral appeal, a coherent foreign or domestic agenda takes second-billing to entrenching lifetime appointments with the power to stymie elected officials.

“Should that be a mission?” the interviewer adroitly asks, unaware of how readily Christie was prepared to double down on the idea that courts are just tools for implementing contemporary GOP policy that can’t win elections. Christie specifically called out Abbott and Mount Laurel as the foundation of his commitment to appointing right-wing judges. The decisions which govern equal funding for poor and minority students and the obligation to provide affordable housing are great threats to Christie because, he says, of how they changed “how a town looks.”

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Did someone just blow a dog whistle in here?

As a 9:30 a.m. speech, I’ve decided to forego my standard Chris Christie game, which is to take a shot every time he calls himself a former prosecutor. And, friends, it was a good decision because the latter stages of the keynote brought the truly challenging questions about law enforcement and provided the uncomfortable moments that got us tuned in.

How does Chris Christie — former prosecutor, don’t ya know — feel about Trump’s pardoning of Charles Kushner? The official answer is that Trump had the authority to pardon whomever he wanted and it “doesn’t take away” the work Christie’s team did. Unofficially, Christie is clearly peeved, moving from his diplomatic answer to detail just how much he thinks Charles Kushner sucks. “We took on the second richest man in NJ who engaged in massive tax fraud…. Then to cover up that fraud engaged in witness tampering like I’ve never seen.” Then, because he’s hyped up, he lets drop that he assumed pardoning Charles Kushner was one of the primary goals of the Trump administration — outing the team he served as a front for scratching the backs of friends and family. Amazing.

Is it time for some traffic problems at Legalweek? You bet! What are Christie’s thoughts on Bridgegate? Well, he blames “the Obama Justice Department” and former U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman for an egregious prosecutorial abuse. The Supreme Court unanimously tossed the case! Christie likes leaning into that fact, even though the Court’s opinion turned on its long-term commitment to gutting all federal government authority to prosecute public corruption than an acknowledgement that Christie’s administration based off petty thuggery were really angels. Indeed, the opinion reads more like, “shouldn’t New Jersey have laws against this instead of the feds?” but that doesn’t fit Christie’s preferred narrative.

And this speech was nothing if not a battle for “narrative.” Christie, after being given COVID and watching as his signature prosecution is undone by nepotism, still can’t stop gushing about his buddy Trump. It’s actually kind of a sad display. The “bipartisan, moderate Trumper” is a hell of a character to draw up, but Christie’s giving it a shot. Let’s see if any of this Legalweek material makes it to his traveling show!

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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