Christie: “Special counsels, at times, have felt the need to produce something in return for their appointment” https://t.co/1cy5yXY0aB
— CNN (@CNN) August 6, 2017
On Sunday morning, Chris Christie took a break from yelling at baseball fans to once again swallow the meatloaf for Team Trump. In doing so, Christie appeared on CNN’s State of the Union while attempting to convince Jake Tapper that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent grand jury impanelment in the Justice Department’s Russia investigation is no big deal.
In the above clip, Christie responded to Tapper’s question about whether it’s “fair game” for Mueller to follow the Trump campaign’s money trail while investigating possible campaign collusion with the Kremlin. In response, the much-maligned New Jersey governor suggested that Mueller could feel pressured to “produce” results to justify his position as special counsel:
“This is part of the problem with the special counsel … Special counsels, at times, historically, have felt the need to produce something in return for their appointment … in the end, though, Bob Mueller is a good man … and I trust that he’ll be very careful and not go on a fishing expedition … so far, there’s absolutely no evidence of any collusion at all between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”
Naturally, Tapper followed up by mentioning Don Jr.’s infamous (and eager) meeting with a Russian attorney as possible collusion, and Christie admitted, “Everybody in retrospect knew this was a bad idea.” This doesn’t erase Don Jr.’s pretty obvious intent to collude with Russia, but Christie’s not worried.
In an earlier clip (below), Tapper asked Christie to consider Trump’s argument that this grand jury is based upon a “fake story” concocted as Democratic retaliation for a lost general election. Christie denied that Trump was referring to Mueller or James Comey in his criticisms, and the governor believes that the press is overstating the grand jury’s importance:
“Let’s be clear, Jake. This is a normal step taken by a careful prosecutor who’s doing a thorough investigation. And I think that’s exactly what Bob Mueller is doing. You can’t issue subpoenas without a grand jury … That’s a typical thing to be done in any investigation .. and so, I thought the coverage about how monumental this was is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way this process works.”
Well, the Russia investigations by both the DOJ and Congress are only beginning, and some — including Dem. Rep Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee, who later told Tapper that the grand jury wouldn’t exist without an “evidentiary basis” — feel that the early appointment of a grand jury is indeed significant. Watch the clip below.
Gov. @ChrisChristie on special counsel Robert Muller using a grand jury in the Russia probe: “This is a normal step” https://t.co/3Y8dZc06zg
— CNN (@CNN) August 6, 2017
(Via CNN)