Christie says Trump kept classified docs because ‘he wants to pretend he’s still president’

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The Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Thursday that he believes former President Trump hid classified documents after leaving the White House because he “wanted to pretend he was still the president.”

“I think it’s all ego,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I think, Jake, he couldn’t and still can’t face the fact that he’s the only person outside of the state of Delaware who lost to Joe Biden, and he wants to pretend he’s still president.”

“He wants to keep pretending he’s president and showing people these things and saying, ‘Look what I’ve got, look what else I know,'” Christie added.

Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 37 counts related to his handling of classified documents, about 300 of which were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago residence last year.

The federal indictment accused the former president of improperly maintaining national defense information, sharing it with individuals without proper security clearances and making efforts to prevent the federal government from recovering classified documents that remained in his possession.

In a partial transcript of an audio recording included in the indictment and later released by CNN, the former president appears to have referred to a classified Pentagon document in a July 2021 meeting with a writer and publisher working on a memoir of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came. Look. It’s him,” Trump said, referring to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley. “They presented it to me — it’s off the record but — they presented it to me. It’s him. It’s the Department of Defense and he .”

Trump also described the document as “highly classified” and “secret information” and acknowledged that he no longer has the ability to declassify it, undercutting one of his earlier arguments.

He has since said that he was not actually in possession of the document during the meeting.

“I would say it’s bravado; if you want to know the truth, it’s bravado,” Trump told Semafor and ABC News. “I’m talking and just holding papers and talking about them, but I don’t have documents. I don’t have any documents.”

Christie, a one-time ally of the former president, has repeatedly contacted Trump since launching his campaign last month, including about the latest indictment.

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At the end of the indictment, the former New Jersey mayor slammed his fellow Republicans for defending Trump’s behavior.

“How about blaming him?” Christie said in a CNN town hall last month. “He did … He took documents he shouldn’t have taken. He hid them when he asked her back? They got a grand jury subpoena. He refused to comply. They finally attacked his home because he refused to comply…

“Everyone blames the prosecutors. He did it. It’s his conduct,” he added.

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