- Chris Christie said this weekend that the events leading up to Jan. 6 were “driven by the top.”
- Christie pointed the finger at the “C-team players” around Trump, blaming them for the Capitol riot.
- He said Trump was reluctant to concede the election, and spurred on by people telling him what he wanted to hear.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gave his take on the events leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, calling it a process “driven from the top” and “executed by C-team players.”
Christie made these comments on Sunday, in an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” hosted by George Stephanopoulos. The former governor was responding to a comment from Stephanopoulos about a PowerPoint presentation sent by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows detailing how the Trump team could work to overturn the election.
—This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 12, 2021
“It seems like, every single day, Chris Christie, we’re learning more about what was going inside the White House in those days leading up to Jan. 6,” Stephanopoulos said, referencing the Meadows PowerPoint presentation. “It may explain why the former president and his allies are working so hard not to cooperate.”
Christie replied that the things that are being revealed now about the Jan. 6 riot were “driven from the top.”
“I mean, the president made it very clear that he did not want to concede the election, that he would not concede the election. And you got a bunch of people around him by the time we got to the end, with very few exceptions, that were C-team players, at best, on their best day,” Christie said.
The former governor added that these “C-team players” told former President Donald Trump what he wanted to hear.
“There were plenty of people on the outside who were telling him this is over, and you need to concede. He didn’t want to hear that,” Christie said.
Christie was critical of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to block House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s GOP picks for the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“The problem now is that because she dictated — for the first time in my memory — who the minority party could have on a committee, it does affect to some extent among people in my party, the credibility the committee has,” he said, before adding that he thought the committee is doing “important work.”
“In the end, the facts are going to come out, but let’s not kid ourselves. This was a driven-from-the-top process executed by C-team players. And that’s why it looks like a Keystone Cops operation, because it was,” Christie said.
Christie’s new comments are his latest salvo in an ongoing feud with the former president. On Nov. 8, Christie urged Trump to “move on” from the 2020 election and “tell the truth.”
Trump then released a statement the next day via his spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, claiming Christie was “just absolutely massacred by his statements that Republicans have to move on from the past, meaning the 2020 Election Fraud.”
“Everybody remembers that Chris left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating — a record low, and they didn’t want to hear this from him!” Trump said in his Nov. 9 statement.
Trump on Dec. 8 also put out a statement via Harrington, commenting on how sales of his book “dwarf Chris Christie’s.”
Separately, Christie also accused Trump of withholding his COVID-positive test status and transmitting the virus to him.
