Ex-Trump ally Chris Christie just sounded a death knell for Trump

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was fairly fresh from learning that he wasn’t getting nominated as President Trump’s new Attorney General when he appeared on ABC‘s This Week today. Despite the latest disappointment for the former Trump acolyte, Christie tried to put on a brave defense of the administration that has rejected his own participation within its ranks since Trump fired him as head of his campaign’s transition team.

Christie discussed the indictment against former Trump attorney Michael Cohen by federal prosecutors in New York and admitted that the language used in the indictment might mean trouble for the president.

“The language in the sentencing memo is different from what we’ve heard before,” Christie said on the program, citing Cohen’s claim that he broke campaign finance law at Trump’s direction. “The only thing that would concern me if I was the president’s team this morning about this sentencing memo is the language.”

“The language sounds very definite,” Christie told ABC’s “This Week.” “And what I’d be concerned about is, what corroboration do they have?”

In singling out the issue of corroborating evidence in the case, the former governor is taking the same line of attack as Trump himself has, painting Cohen as an admitted liar and not very credible witness.

“Because everyone knows that Michael Cohen is not going to be the most effective or trustworthy witness on the stand, given some of his past statements,” Christie said. “When prosecutors sound that definitive they’ve got more usually than just one witness.”

“Now the flip-side for the prosecutors is, they’d better have more than one witness on this because if you’re shooting at the president of the United States and the only bullet in your gun is Michael Cohen, well I think that’s a problem,” Christie continued. “So I think it’s going to be very interesting to see how this thing plays out.”

Given the importance of this particular investigation, it’s very likely that Cohen is not the arrow in federal prosecutors’ quivers in the case against the president. Christie admitted as much in his determining the relative danger to Trump from the New York-based federal prosecutors leading the case against Cohen in the Southern District versus that of the probe led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“The Michael Cohen situation is much more perilous for the White House than was [special counsel] Bob Mueller,” Christie explained.

Christie continued to repeat the president’s denial of any collusion with Russia as he warned the White House of the dangers of the New York prosecution team having additional evidence to back up Cohen’s claims, evidence likely garnered from the reams of files and numerous surreptitious audio recordings seized from Cohen’s office during FBI raids.

“There’s no Russia collusion, there’s been no proof of Russia collusion, and I don’t think there’s gonna be,” Christie said. “This is the stuff that should be much more concerning to the White House legal team and that language is very very strong and very definitive so the prosecutors better have corroboration.”

You can watch a clip of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on ABC‘s This Week in the video below.

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Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.