Chris Christie accuses Jared Kushner of orchestrating a political 'hit job' against him in a new tell-all book
- In his new book, Chris Christie accused the president's son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, of pushing him out of President Donald Trump's orbit because of a long-held grudge.
- The former New Jersey governor says Kushner was behind his November 2016 ouster as the head of the presidential transition team.
- Christie says that Kushner took revenge on him for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, in 2005 for witness tampering and tax evasion.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and head of President Donald Trump's transition team, says the president's son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, pushed him out of Trump's orbit because of a long-held grudge.
In his new memoir, "Let Me Finish," Christie argues that Kusher harbored a deep resentment for him for leading the 2005 prosecution of his father, Charles Kushner, according to The Guardian, which obtained an advanced copy of the book. (The elder Kushner ultimately spent more than a year in federal prison for witness tampering and tax evasion.)
The governor was officially fired from his post leading Trump's transition team by former top adviser Steve Bannon shortly after the November election. Christie wrote that he demanded that Bannon reveal who had made the executive decision to oust him, and Bannon told him it was Kushner.
"Steve Bannon … made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago," he wrote.
Christie said that Kushner dressed him down in a meeting with Trump and Christie in April 2016.
"He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn't state one fact to back that up," Christie wrote. "Just a lot of feelings - very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years."
Christie also contends that Trump has been "ill served by poor advice" from Kushner and other top advisers.
Once a star in the Republican Party with a nearly 80% approval rating, Christie left office in 2018 with the lowest approval rating of any governor in the state's history. This came after several scandals, including the criminal convictions of two of his top aides.
Once unafraid to diverge from party orthodoxy, Christie has in recent years tacked to the right, running for president in 2016 on a conservative platform and becoming one of the first prominent Republicans to endorse Trump's presidential bid.