President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to investigate former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over the 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal, another chapter in the president’s effort to wield the power of the Executive Branch against his critics.
“For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again?” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday. “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!”
The president’s broadside against Christie, a two-time GOP primary opponent of Trump's, recalls a 12-year-old scandal that rocked the then-governor's high profile within the Republican Party. Two of Christie’s allies were convicted in a scheme to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge connecting New Jersey to Manhattan, retaliation against a nearby mayor who declined to back the governor’s 2013 bid for reelection. Both convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2020.
“Can anyone believe anything that Sloppy Chris says?” Trump wrote.
It came after Christie criticized the Justice Department under Trump’s leadership during an interview with ABC News, the network where he is a contributor.
“Let me say candidly to the American people who are watching,” Christie, among the loudest critics of Trump within the Republican Party, said. “You were told this. You were told that this was what he was going to do. And not by me, by Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign. He told you that he was going to do this, that he was going to have a Justice Department that acted as his personal legal representation.”
Christie did not immediately respond to a request for comment from POLITICO on the president's threat.
Just last week, Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff, a longtime Trump enemy, formed a legal defense fund amid the Justice Department’s investigation into his finances. And John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who later became another vocal critic of the president’s foreign policy, had his Maryland home searched by federal agents.
The president and Christie were also once allies. The former New Jersey governor endorsed Trump during his first White House campaign in 2016. He then briefly ran Trump’s first presidential transition and helped Trump prepare for his September 2020 debate against former President Joe Biden.
Christie turned against Trump after the 2020 election and ran against him in 2024.
“He’s becoming crazier,” Christie said of then-candidate Trump as the campaign kicked into high gear in December 2023.
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