Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, now a presidential candidate against Donald Trump for 2024, explained to CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that, back in his days as a prosecutor, a target letter of the sort special counsel Jack Smith sent to the former president essentially always signaled an indictment was imminent.
"You're a former federal prosecutor and former U.S. Attorney," said Blitzer. "Give us your thoughts on the likelihood the special counsel could actually secure a conviction of Trump."
"It's hard to say, Wolf," said Christie, one of the few GOP candidates consistently criticizing Trump on the trail. "We haven't seen the indictment yet, and I tried to be very careful about this both on the classified documents case and also now this one ... my sense is that it will be a speaking indictment, as we call it in the business, which will provide detail about the evidence that backs up the charges, and it's speculation until we see what the grand jury returns, if they return something."
"You assume they will?" Blitzer pressed him.
"I don't think the target letter — at least in my experience, I would never send a target letter if I wasn't completely sure to put something in front of the grand jury to return the indictment," said Christie.
The former governor also took aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), a key rival for the nomination, over his comments attacking the charges against Trump.
"No one is above the law ... I think this is where Ron's getting it wrong, is Donald Trump's conduct," said Christie. "Remember, he was complaining about the last indictment and a number of people in my party, but you can't complain about the indictment and not acknowledge that the conduct where you lie to your lawyers, where you show around classified documents regarding our intelligence activities and our military activities. Wolf, what that does is potentially put our troops at risk and potentially put our intelligence officers at risk and we're out there doing dangerous things around the world."
Christie added that he believes Hillary Clinton should have been charged over her own, considerably less-egregious classified information possession; however, "you don't continue to fix the justice system based on giving people passes based on what political party is. You do it without fear, favor or partisanship. That's what we should be doing. What we should be focused on here is Donald Trump's conduct and whether or not, Wolf, that conduct is appropriate for somebody to be sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. I say it's not."
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