Chris Christie, the former Republican New Jersey governor who served on President Trump’s transition team, said Sunday that the indictment of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, is “pretty damning.”
Christie also predicted that Stone, who was indicted Friday on seven counts in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, would be in “very, very grave danger” if he decides to fight the charges in a trial.
{mosads}“The fact is that he’s got a problem. They’ve got all these emails and text messages that he created that tell a pretty clear story, and I think it’s going to be very difficult for a jury to listen to that and conclude that it wasn’t what he was trying to do,” Christie said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
“If he decides to go to trial, he’s in very, very grave danger,” Christie added. “Everyone is presumed innocent, and so is he, but the indictment I think is a pretty damning indictment.”
Stone was indicted on one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements and one count of witness tampering.
Stone earlier on Sunday called the indictment “thin as piss on a rock” and said that text messages cited in it were taken out of context.
Christie, however, said he disagreed with that characterization.
“The fact of the matter is that every white-collar defendant in this circumstance, when they’re confronted with a bunch of documents of their own making, tries to say that they’re out of context,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every time I had a defendant tell me when I was U.S. attorney that something was out of context, I’d be a rich guy and I’m not.”
Christie also said he doesn’t think it would be “politically viable” for Trump to pardon Stone.
“Legally, I think he’s absolutely well within his right to do it,” he said. “The president understands the limits of politics and he’s understanding it even more. And I think he knows that those kinds of pardons would not be politically viable.”