Christie was born in Newark, New Jersey and raised in Livingston, New Jersey. After graduating in 1984 from the University of Delaware, he earned a J.D. at Seton Hall University School of Law. A Republican, Christie was elected county freeholder (legislator) for Morris County, New Jersey, serving from 1995 to 1998. By 2002, he had campaigned for Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush; the latter appointed him U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, a position he held from 2002 to 2008.
Christie won the 2009 Republican primary for Governor of New Jersey and defeated Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine in the general election. In his first term, he was credited with cutting spending, capping property tax growth, and engaging in recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy. He was re-elected by a wide margin in 2013. During his second term as governor, Christie's standing was damaged by the Fort Lee lane closure scandal. After that time, he ranked among the least popular governors in the United States.
Christie chaired the Republican Governors Association during the 2014 election cycle. On June 30, 2015, he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election. He suspended his candidacy on February 10, 2016. Later, he endorsed eventual winner Donald Trump and was named head of Trump's transition planning team. Christie left office in 2018 at the conclusion of his second term as Governor of New Jersey, and registered as a lobbyist in June 2020
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Chris Christie calls Trump legal team a 'national embarrassment'
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had harsh words for President Trump’s legal team as it pursues its increasingly quixotic quest to overturn the November election.
“Quite frankly, the conduct of the president’s legal team has been a national embarrassment,” Christie said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Trump lost the Nov. 3 election to President-elect Joe Biden, but has launched a series of lawsuits seeking to claim victory in states narrowly won by the Democrat. But the cases have been largely dismissed, and judges have consistently rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.
The Trump campaign lost one of its most important cases on Saturday night, when a federal judge in Pennsylvania both rejected a major Trump lawsuit in the state and excoriated the president’s legal team for its speculative arguments. In the decision, the Republican judge even mocked the Trump team for presenting a “haphazardly stitched together” argument, “like Frankenstein’s Monster.”
Despite the humiliating legal setback, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani issued a statement on Saturday claiming that the rejection “turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court” through the appeals process.
Both Giuliani and fellow attorney Sidney Powell have advanced a number of conspiracies about the election, including last week at a surreal press conference in which they claimed a “massive influence of communist money” had been funneled into the election.
On Sunday, Christie cited the conduct of Powell in particular for her unsubstantiated claim that the Republican governor of Georgia is part of a conspiracy to rig the election against Trump.
“Sidney Powell [is] accusing Gov. Brian Kemp of a crime on television, yet [is] unwilling to … lay out the evidence she supposedly has,” said Christie, a former U.S. attorney. “This is outrageous conduct by any lawyer.”
Georgia is one of the states narrowly won by Biden; Trump is pursuing a recount unlikely to change the result.
Christie further praised Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., for clearly acknowledging Biden’s victory after the Pennsylvania judge’s ruling on Saturday night. In a statement, Toomey described Judge Matthew Brann as a “longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist.” Trump responded to the statement on Twitter, where he called Toomey “no friend of mine.”
Christie said he hopes more Republicans step forward.
“As much as I’m a strong Republican, and I love my party, it is the country that has to come first,” he said.
One Republican, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, said Sunday that he was “embarrassed that more people in the party aren’t speaking up” about Trump’s refusal to concede. Trump took a shot at Hogan on Twitter not long after.
