Republicans on the House Oversight Committee did not do enough to protect President Donald Trump while questioning his former attorney Michael Cohen during a public hearing earlier this week, and the president was likely not happy about that while negotiating with North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un in Vietnam, ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Friday.
"We Republicans need to defend the president on substance," Christie told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "They dropped the ball on the president."
Rather than focusing on proving Cohen was a liar, the congressmen should have been asking him direct questions, said Christie.
Meanwhile, Cohen's testimony brought a "whole bunch" of additional witnesses that the House can bring in, including Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and the president's children.
"What he said concerning to me about the way the process will work," said Christie. "He was in constant contact with the Southern District of New York in that he believes the president committed other crimes, but he can't talk about it because he is working with the southern district of New York. This why I said all along the Southern District is much more worrisome than Mueller. They have no restriction on what they can look at."
Christie, who worked with Trump's transition team, also rejected Cohen's claim that he didn't want a White House job.
"He never spoke to me directly, but he spoke to other people in the transition who said he would be White House chief of staff," said Christie. "No question in my mind what he said at the hearing was false."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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