Chris Christie For Attorney General? - Updated

Chris Christie is at the White House

— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) November 8, 2018

Who in their right mind would join the Trump administration at this point? My belief is that anyone with a brain and a pulse is frantically trying to get out before they're destroyed. (There are rumors that Trump alums are already having difficulty getting jobs post-White House.) Does Chris Christie really want to be Attorney General? It's possible. His name is on some of the lists I've seen. Will he get the job? Maybe. But consider the following.

Back in July, 2016, after Christie was considered for VP but not chosen, I wrote a post titled Unintended Consequences. It included this:

Does Chris Christie regret putting a man named Charles Kushner in jail back in 2005, when he was a U.S. attorney? Possibly. Is that the reason he wasn't chosen to be Donald Trump's running mate? Possibly. In a story dated March 4, 2005, the New York Times explains what happened:

NEWARK, March 4 - Charles Kushner, a multimillionaire real estate executive, philanthropist and one of the top Democratic donors in the country, was sentenced on Friday to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.

Mr. Kushner, 50, built a construction business begun by his father into a private real estate empire that owned more than 25,000 apartments, millions of square feet of commercial and industrial space and thousands of acres of developable land.

But Mr. Kushner also became embroiled in a bitter family feud over the business and how proceeds were distributed. That dispute, plus his growing prominence as a political financier, helped lead to his downfall. The intrafamily acrimony was such that Mr. Kushner retaliated against his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities, by hiring a prostitute to seduce him. He then arranged to have a secretly recorded videotape of the encounter sent to his sister, the man's wife.

The two-year sentence was the most Mr. Kushner could have received under a plea agreement, reached last September with the United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, that called for 18 to 24 months in prison. But it was less than the sentence of nearly three years that Mr. Christie had sought in recent weeks after concluding that Mr. Kushner had failed to show "acceptance of responsibility" for his crimes as required by the plea deal. Read the article here. 

What does this have to do with the current Veepstakes? Charles Kushner's son Jared is now married to Ivanka Trump. He's The Donald's son-in-law and word on the street is that Jared Kushner does not want the man who put his father in jail on the ticket. How about that! (Read the entire post here.)

Jared didn't want Christie as the VP nominee and I've also seen reporting that claims Jared was behind Christie's dismissal as head of the transition team, once it became clear that there really was going to be a transition. In spite of the happy talk coming from the White House, insisting that Jared and Chris work well together and get along just fine, I'd bet that Jared still hates Chris Christie with the fury of God's own thunder. (Hat tip: Aaron Sorkin.) I just can't see Chris Christie being welcomed into the Trump White House as long as Jared is still there.

Update. Some thoughts from Josh Marshall about the Acting Attorney General:

Here's the part that I'm most focused on. This [firing Jeff Sessions/installing Whitaker] is clearly a corrupt act as to intention. We should now clearly see the Mueller probe as under direct attack, under immediate threat and likely to be damaged. However, I do not think we should assume this was well-planned or thought out. This isn't meant to be pollyanna-ish. It's really, really bad. But to me the Comey firing was instructive. It was also really, really bad. But it was also clear that it was impulsive, poorly thought out and in many ways counterproductive. It led immediately to the intensification of the investigation and the appointment of Robert Mueller. I think it's possible this move will have unpredicted outcomes which will be damaging to Trump.

Relatedly, Mueller is a career player in US law enforcement. Whitaker appears to be basically a punk. For all the fanfic we see about Mueller from the resistance, he's not a member of the resistance. He's never going to go rogue. He's a man of the Department of Justice. If Whitaker is the lawful AG I think he will follow his guidance and oversight to the degree it is lawful. But Mueller is clearly smarter than Whitaker and much, much more experienced. What I don't expect is that he would be cowed by bureaucratic game-playing. So I suspect we're in a slow motion Saturday Night Massacre but one that is on-going rather than done and in which the particulars of how it plays out are less predictable than we might imagine. (Read the entire post here.)

Update #2. More from TPM, posted at 7.56 a.m. Friday morning:

After the White House was met with rejection from two potential attorney general candidates, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is becoming a likelier possibility, according to a Thursday Politico report. 

President Donald Trump reportedly thinks that Christie deserves the post after patiently enduring the humiliation of being completely passed over during the 2016 transition. 

Christie was spotted at the White House on Thursday for a meeting with Jared Kushner about prison reform. He is reportedly working to mend his relationship with Kushner, one that has been acrimonious since Christie landed Kushner's father in jail. 

Per Politico, Christie could, however, face calls to recuse himself from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe if he got the job due to his role in Trump's 2016 election. A recusal would almost certainly earn Trump's enduring fury, as former attorney general Jeff Sessions knows well.

Interesting. This both reinforces my belief that at this point wise people aren't willing to destroy their futures by working for this president and challenges my belief that there's no way Christie would even be considered as long as Jared is around. Is it possible that Christie has sufficiently abased himself to earn Jared's forgiveness? Maybe, but imagine the scene: Big, loud, in-your-face New Jersey tough guy Chris Christie, slobbering all over slender, baby-faced born-on-third-base-thinks-he-hit-a-triple presidential son-in-law Jared... The mind reels. 

Even if Christie eventually gets the job, things are still pretty humiliating for him. On top of having to suck up to Jared Kushner, he'll have to live with a narrative that says he only got the job because no one else wanted it. The Politico article referred to above is headlined "Sessions' job is hard to fill. Enter Chris Christie." Yikes. (Read it here.) Who are the two smart people who said no? Their names will probably surface eventually; the New York Daily News is running a story that says Kris Kobach, Lindsey Graham, Pam Bondi and Rudy Giuliani are under consideration along with Christie. Read it here.

Update #3. AJ speaks some truth about the Christie situation: "[N]o one on the campaign impregnated him"

Always interesting when Trump reinforces that those who supported him deserve jobs.
Christie did (albeit late in the game) and no one the campaign impregnated him so he’s good to go. https://t.co/i7JkxPUmbu

— A.J. Delgado (@AJDelgado13) November 9, 2018

Update #4 on Monday, November 12. From Politico:

A scandal not nearly as infamous as Bridgegate could have major implications for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie if he's nominated to become the next U.S. Attorney General. 

In 2016, the Christie administration paid a $1.5 million settlement to a former assistant county prosecutor who claimed the administration took over his office and fired him, all with the aim of dismissing the office's 43-count indictment against several of the governor's allies that embarrassed one of Christie's major contributors. 

That whistleblower, Bennett Barlyn, told POLITICO on Monday that he has grave concerns about Christie becoming the nation's top law enforcement official, and his case could take on new relevance, with the next attorney general poised to take over the department that oversees the special counsel's investigation in the 2016 election.

Barlyn said that if Christie is nominated, the Senate should look at this case as just one way the former governor wielded justice, both as governor and U.S. Attorney, for political ends. Barlyn noted that during Christie's time as U.S. Attorney,  some companies entered into deferred prosecution agreements with the office in which, rather than face prosecution, they paid Christie's allies millions of dollars to monitor them. (Read the rest of the story here.)