Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Wednesday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” that former President Donald Trump will be indicted before the Republican presidential primary debates begin later this summer.
Partial transcript as follows:
HEWITT: All right, now given that all that you know about the President’s legal peril from the perspective of being a prosecutor for so many years, knowing the President, following not int eh inside of his legal team, but from the outside and knowing all the players, do you expect he will be indicted before the debates begin in July and August, for, by either the Georgia Fulton County prosecutor, by Jack Smith, by the New York District Attorney? Do you expect an indictment of the former President?
CHRISTIE: I think the most likely place it will happen is New York. And I think it’s the least harmful matter to him. If in fact all they’re looking at is the Stormy Daniels payments, I think that Letitia James has made it clear that she’s a political prosecutor, and that what she wants to do, and that she promised during the campaign, that she was going to go get Donald Trump. And I think she probably will. But I don’t think that would do much harm to him. So I think in terms of the likelihood of indictment, I’d put New York first, the Special Counsel second, Georgia third. But in terms of the seriousness of the peril for the President, I’d put the Special Counsel above either of those.
HEWITT: Now I, so in brief, do you expect an indictment by July?
CHRISTIE: I expect that New York probably would act. I don’t know whether the Special Counsel will act by that time, but my guess is that New York would act by that time.
HEWITT: Can someone run for office and do debates and give interviews when they’re under indictment and not make their situation worse?
CHRISTIE: No, I think it’s impossible for them not to make the situation worse, although what I would say to you, Hugh, is that given the limited nature of the New York case, I don’t know that he’s going to be getting a whole lot of questions about the Stormy Daniels situation anyway. I think it seems to me a pretty cut and dry situation. And I don’t know that he’d make his situation markedly worse. But every time you open your mouth, as you know in this kind of situation, you run the real risk of it adding complications to a case where you could lose your liberty. And that’s why defense lawyers always rightfully tell their clients to keep quiet, because you don’t need to make that situation more complicated, because your liberty is at stake.
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