Former New Jersey Governor and current Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie recently told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that ex-President Donald Trump will “almost certainly” go to jail if he proceeds to a trial in the classified documents case.
On Thursday afternoon’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper asked Christie if Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta would be wise to take their chances with a South Florida jury rather than accept a plea deal.
Nauta is the Trump “body man” who was indicted along with the ex-president in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents probe, and entered a not guilty plea Thursday.Christie told Tapper going to trial is a losing strategy, especially since “my suspicion is that Donald Trump knows he’s guilty”:
TAPPER: Sources say both Trump and his indicted aide, Walt Nauta, who appeared in court today, are convinced they should take their cases to trial.
Their hope is for an acquittal because there will be a jury pool from South Florida. Florida is a state that Trump won. All you need is one juror. What do you make of that strategy?
CHRISTIE: Look, it’s a real roll of the dice, because what happens then, when you know you’re guilty — and my suspicion is that Donald Trump knows he’s guilty — you go and you take a case to trial, there will then be a presumption of a jail — of jail time.
And, basically, the way most U.S. attorney’s offices handle that is, if you plead, we can work with you in terms of whether you have to go to jail or not on some of the charges that he’s talking about here. If you make the case go to trial, if you force us to go and put the witnesses on stand and the judge to take the time and the jury to take the time, and you’re prosecuted and convicted, then it’s almost certain that you would face jail.
And so it’s a huge roll the dice for both of these guys to do that. And I think that’s a lot of bluster right now. I think, as this case gets closer, they may think differently.
And, on a jury, I think it’s horrible to say that about a jury anywhere. Look, I was in New Jersey, one of the bluest states in America, right?
TAPPER: Sure. Yes.
CHRISTIE: But I never found a jury — and we did 130 political corruption cases during my seven years. I never found a jury, Jake, that was focused on politics.
TAPPER: Because you weed them out during voir dire?
CHRISTIE: Part of it.
TAPPER: Yes.
CHRISTIE: But also part of it is, when they take that oath and they sit in one of those grand federal courtrooms, I found that most citizens take that responsibility really seriously.
And even if they have certain points of view or prejudices — we all do — they really take it seriously when the judge says, you have to put that aside and judge this only based on the facts that are presented here in this courtroom. And I found that jurors that I ran into for seven years as U.S. attorney, I never saw one of them make what I thought was a political judgment.
So they may be overestimating that as well.”
