After the FBI searched the office and home of President Donald Trump‘s former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has become a vocal Trump critic, Trump threatened to launch an investigation into former New Jersey Governor and two-time GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie, revisiting the so-called “Bridgegate” scandal from Christie’s time in the Governor’s mansion.
Hey, if Bridgegate was a problem for Donald J. Trump…why did he hire Chris Christie TWICE after Bridgegate?
— Joshua B. Hoe (@JoshuaBHoe) August 25, 2025
Christie, a former Trump insider who ran his 2024 presidential campaign pointedly against Trump, is now a regular contributor to the ABC News political talk show This Week.
This week, Christie (who was the U.S. Attorney for the State of New Jersey before being elected Governor) was asked for his opinion regarding the released transcripts of U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche‘s meetings with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex offender who was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offenses in connection with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a former friend of Trump.
Note: Following the Blanche meetings, Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence, was moved from a Florida prison to a less restrictive, minimum-security facility in Texas.
“What was the deputy attorney general doing? This has nothing to do with an ongoing Department of Justice investigation,” former DOJ spokesperson Sarah Isgur said after the DOJ released transcripts of Todd Blanche’s meetings with Ghislaine Maxwell. https://t.co/U4ri0a4jBB pic.twitter.com/m7lCRho7XG
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 24, 2025
As heard in the audio (above), Maxwell told Blanche: “President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find — I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him. And I’ve always liked him.”
When asked by Blanche if she “ever heard anyone say that President Trump had done anything inappropriate…with anyone in your world,” Maxwell said, “Absolutely never.”
After broadcasting the audio, This Week host Jonathan Karl asked Christie, “Case closed?”, to which Christie laughed and focused on Trump’s potential role in pardoning Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime partner.
Emphasizing Trump’s power position in relation to the incarcerated Maxwell, Christie said: “When you go in there like that to a person who, she might as well [have] taken out ‘Donald Trump’, or ‘President Trump’, and said, ‘The man who can pardon me has never done anything wrong. The man who can pardon me has always been wonderful. I commend the man who could pardon me for being re-elected.'”
He added: “Look, Ghislaine Maxwell recruited 15, 16-year-old girls to be sex slaves to Jeffrey Epstein, and she was convicted of that in federal court. Why should we believe a damn thing Ghislaine Maxwell to say about anyone?”
Christie added: “Now that doesn’t mean Donald Trump is guilty of anything. In fact, in my own experience, John, I don’t think Donald Trump had anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein that was untoward or illegal. But we’re going to believe Ghislaine Maxwell? Give me a break.”
Note: The other guest on The Week, Sarah Isgur, former DOJ spokesperson during the first Trump administration, commented: “What was the deputy attorney general doing? This has nothing to do with an ongoing Department of Justice investigation. He should have a lot of other things on his plate. It was sort of just shocking to hear a deputy attorney general spend this much time with someone in federal prison was not providing information about any ongoing Department of Justice work.”
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