Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie stunned his fellow panelists on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday morning when he tore after his ex-boss, James Comey. In his new book, A Higher Loyalty, Comey admits the likelihood Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidential election influenced his decision to release a letter on October 28, 2016 about restarting the then-closed Clinton email investigation. He wrote:
It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer. Like many others, I was surprised when Donald Trump was elected president. I had assumed from media polling that Hillary Clinton was going to win.
Christie, a former federal prosecutor who once worked for Comey, turned the tables on those remarks: “When I worked for Jim, if I’d have said to him 11 days before an election that I was going to release information that could potentially affect the election and one of the things that influenced me was the polling, he would have fired me. He would have fired me on the spot.” Christie insisted his old boss violated a Justice Department rule that prohibits any action against a political candidate 60 days before an election. He called the political machinations at the FBI “depressing.” The brief head of Trump’s transition team also defended the president’s firing of Comey.
After the show, Christie went on a Twitter rant to repeat his accusations, saying it was “obvious that Jim Comey began to believe his own press clippings.” Ouch.
(Also of interest on Sunday’s show: Poor Matthew Dowd is the only person left in the universe who thinks the Steele dossier is legit. Even Steele doesn’t believe it.)
