Chris Christie’s Achilles Heel

by Roger L. Simon

Apparently, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is going to run for president in the Republican primary, throwing another hat in the ring that will soon have so many they could open a store. (Who’s Ryan Binkley? Ditto Perry Johnson?)

A super-PAC with the name “Tell It Like It Is” was formed for Christie, and will be led by, according to CBS, “veteran GOP operative Brian Jones. Jones advised both Sen. Mitt Romney when he ran for president in 2012 and the late Sen. John McCain in 2008.”

Sounds like a winner, no?

But Christie has a far bigger problem in what seems to be a quixotic attempt to achieve what he failed to do in 2016 than an adviser who counseled two losers.

That problem is one of the most despised men by the GOP rank-and-file in the country … FBI Director Christopher A. Wray.

Wray was Christie’s attorney during the “Bridgegate” political revenge scandal and continued to work for the governor “seven months after jurors found two of Christie’s former aides guilty of shutting the George Washington Bridge entrance lanes,” according to the Asbury Park Press.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in 2020, holding that the aides ordered the bridge lanes closed for no reason other than political payback and concluded that the fraud charges of which they were convicted couldn’t be upheld since no property or money was involved.

That paper further added: “Wray’s law firm has collected $2.1 million from New Jersey taxpayers since being hired by Christie in 2014, including $653,034 for work both during the six-week federal corruption trial and since then, according to bills obtained by the Asbury Park Press under a public records request.”

But Christie’s connection to Wray didn’t end there.

It was the former New Jersey governor who recommended Wray to then President Donald Trump for James Comey’s replacement as FBI director.

Yahoo News reports:

“Former President Donald Trump told Chris Christie that FBI Director Christopher Wray was the ‘worst member’ of his administration and blamed Christie for recommending Wray for the role, the former New Jersey governor wrote in his forthcoming memoir.

“Christie writes that Trump randomly brought up Wray’s job performance while Christie was at the White House helping the president prepare for his first debate with Joe Biden in September 2020.

“’Do you want to know who the worst member of my administration is?’” Trump asked Christie, according to the book, ‘Republican Rescue.’ ‘Your guy. Your guy Chris Wray. He’s the worst.’

“Christie writes that he urged Trump to hire Wray, a former federal prosecutor, after the president fired former FBI Director James Comey in the spring of 2017.”

Perhaps the most amazing part of all this is that Christie actually wrote about it in his memoir.

Most would put any connection to Wray as far down the memory hole as possible, especially if he were planning to run for president as a Republican.

Comey’s replacement proved to be just as bad as his predecessor, doing anything that could forestall investigation of the increasingly disdained FBI, even post the Durham Report.

Now, Wray faces a contempt of Congress charge for defying a subpoena in the Biden family investigation. It’s not clear how this will play out, but the Washington Examiner has this report as of late May 30:

“FBI Director Christopher Wray blew through another subpoena deadline and faces a contempt charge for refusing to hand over a form allegedly describing a “criminal scheme” involving President Joe Biden.

“Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who is conducting an investigation into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, said Tuesday the FBI again declined to hand over the FBI record, which lays out an alleged “scheme” tied to Joe Biden and a yet-unnamed “foreign national” during the president’s vice presidency.”

No one is surprised these days at the behavior of the FBI or its leadership, which many Republicans now see as tantamount to the police agencies of various totalitarian governments. It’s seemingly more concerned with punishing its domestic enemies than protecting the populace.

Most of the Republican candidates have been calling for the agency’s total reformation as do what appears to be the vast majority of the conservative chattering class, but Christie—the backer of Christopher “Stonewall” Wray—wants us to vote for him for president.

Frankly, it’s unfathomable.

I thought Christie himself was a prosecutor, that he believed in the rule of law, but that came under suspicion during “Bridgegate.”

It isn’t hard to predict that that same Republican rank-and-file that is currently urging Congress to hold Wray in contempt will have little use for a Christie candidacy. But that doesn’t stop the man himself and his backers from going forward in what I call “political lust” in my forthcoming book “American Refugees.”

They say the longer the list of candidates, the more likely Trump’s nomination. But that doesn’t stop the “lusty.”

First published in the Epoch Times.