During a SiriusXM Town Hall event at New England College in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie was asked a direct question about whether he believes the Trump family is corrupt. The question came in the context of House Republicans officially opening an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on the same day.
Christie stated that, in his opinion, there isn’t enough evidence at this point to support an impeachment of President Biden. However, he emphasized the importance of the House using its oversight function to investigate instances of corruption. Christie specifically mentioned concerns related to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump allegedly making over $40 million a year while serving in the White House.
When asked directly if he believed the Trump family is corrupt, Christie responded affirmatively, saying, “Yes. Sure. I mean, it’s just readily apparent.” He cited examples, such as payments made from campaign funds to Kimberly Guilfoyle for a short speech and substantial expenses for Melania Trump’s stylist, which he viewed as questionable uses of campaign donations. Christie also pointed out that Jared Kushner received significant investments from foreign entities like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE shortly after leaving the White House, without investing any of that money for an extended period but still collecting management fees.
The moderator Steve Scully followed up and asked, “So are you saying that the Trump family is corrupt?”
“Yes. Sure. I mean, it’s just I mean, it’s it’s readily apparent,” Christie shot back, adding:
I mean, when you pay your your son’s girlfriend 60 grand out of campaign money to give a three-minute speech, you’re using money that people donated to you. And by the way, that money was donated by people who wanted to fund him to fight the stolen election, when they donated that money, they didn’t think 60 grand was going to Kimberly Guilfoyle to give a three-minute speech.
They didn’t think $280,000 was going to Melania’s stylist. Right. So I don’t know what you would call that other than corrupt. And to send Jared Kushner to the Middle East and then having him within six months, and by the way, the 2 billion he got from the Saudis up until five days ago, he didn’t invest in any of that money. He got at six months after they left office in the middle of 2021. We’re down to the third quarter of 2023. That’s two years he hadn’t invested a nickle of the money, but paid himself his management fee out of that money as a percentage of the 2 billion, every quarter, for what? What was he managing? To make sure, pick up the phone and make sure the 2 billion was still there. Okay, great.
“So yeah, that looks like corruption to me.”
