Chris Christie’s name made a brief appearance in Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial Friday as jury selection continued.
The former governor, who staked his failed 2024 presidential campaign on taking Trump head on, is a New Jersey native, so it’s no wonder someone who lives in Manhattan could know someone who knows him.
“The next potential juror jumps to Q29A, and discloses that a family member is a lifelong friend of former NJ Gov. Chris Christie. When asked if that would be a problem: “I don’t believe so.” Merchan: “Is that a figure of speech or—” Her: “Sorry, a figure of speech. I’m nervous.” Tyler McBrien, a managing editor at Lawfare posted to X, formerly Twitter.
Christie was among the first mainstream Republicans to get behind Trump in 2016 after Christie’s first failed presidential bid. He was close with the former president for the four years Trump was in the White House, but split with him after Trump refused to accept the results of the 2020 election.
Christie campaigned hard against Trump in New Hampshire in the Republican primary. But his campaign never took off and he dropped out shortly before voters there went to the polls.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious — and, he says, bogus — stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign. On Monday, Trump called the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a “scam” and “witch hunt.”
The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the sexual encounter ever happened.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees. Prosecutors have described it as part of a scheme to bury damaging stories Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he had made about women.
Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment and that it was designed to stop Daniels from going public about the alleged encounter. But Trump has previously said it had nothing to do with the campaign.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stories by Matt Arco
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.