Chris Christie helped President Trump avoid humiliation by announcing he was withdrawing from consideration to become the third chief of staff in quick succession instead of refusing the offer, a new book claims.
The account, which is highly complimentary toward the former New Jersey governor and may be based on information provided by Christie himself, is detailed in a new book, A Very Stable Genius, by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, which will be published on Tuesday.
Their sources display word-for-word knowledge of several of Christie’s phone conversations. Christie has also previously described much of the episode in his memoir and in interviews to promote his book.
The latest retelling offers several flattering details, including how Rudy Giuliani, a confidant of the president, first alerted Christie by phone that Trump was poised to offer him the job.
“You’re the best person in position for the reelect,” Giuliani told him. “You’re the smartest politician. You can run the place.”
It describes how Trump tried to persuade Christie to take the job in December 2018 and offers details about how the president’s family was involved in the effort.
The book details how Christie rejected the offer after Ivanka Trump called his wife, Mary Pat Christie, to reassure her that no harm could come to her husband if he took the job, despite long-standing ill feeling with Jared Kushner.
That left Christie with a dilemma at a time when the media were full of headlines that Trump could not attract top talent to join his team. A refusal risked further embarrassment.
“How about if I just tweet out that I’m withdrawing from consideration, that way I didn’t say no to you,” he told the president.
Kushner was the stumbling block. Christie blamed the president’s son-in-law for his sudden ejection from the presidential transition team in 2016.
It was the result of a simmering feud that began when Christie, then a U.S. attorney, prosecuted Kushner’s father for tax evasion in a case that revealed that Charles Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law as part of a family dispute. In 2005, the elder Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
That made entering the White House, while the younger Kushner remained in a position of power, an unenticing prospect for Christie.
“You guys are nuts,” Christie reportedly told Giuliani. “I’m not going in there and [having] Jared down the hall.”
He met Trump in the White House residence later that day, but details of the offer appeared in the press before Christie had returned home. Trump later admitted to his friend that he was behind the leak, according to the new details.
Kushner telephoned Christie the next day to offer his assurance that they could work together. And later that day, Ivanka Trump called Mary Pat Christie.
“Mother to mother, wife to wife, I know what your concerns must be,” she said, going on to pledge “that no harm would come to Christie were he to take the job,” according to the account.
Mary Pat Christie later told her husband to speak to the president soon. “Listen, if you’re going to take it, take it, but if you’re going to say no, you better call him now because these calls didn’t happen by accident,” she said, adding that any delay risked a presidential tweet announcing the appointment whether he had accepted or not.
Christie later called the president to say: “It’s just not the right time.”
He explained that he had concerns about working with Kushner and that his forthcoming memoir offered a deeply unflattering portrait of Trump’s son-in-law.
[Read more: ‘I’m really sorry about this, Dad’: How Don Jr. apologized for Trump Tower meeting and ‘mess’ that followed]
