New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former chairman of President Donald Trump’s transition team, said Monday that he repeatedly recommend that Trump not give a job to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser now under investigation for potential collusion with Russia during the campaign.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn in the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said during a during a wide-ranging news conference in Trenton, N.J.
Christie, a Republican who was relieved of his duties overseeing the transition shortly after the November election, declined to detail his concerns about Flynn.
“I’m not going to get into specifics,” Christie said. “Some of it involves classified information that I’m just not at liberty to discuss.”
Christie said that Flynn was “not my cup of tea” and that the two “didn’t see eye-to-eye.”
“I didn’t think that he was someone who would bring benefit to the president or to the administration,” Christie said. “And I made that very clear to candidate Trump, and I made it very clear to President-elect Trump. That was my opinion, my view.”
While he was running the transition, Christie said, “I was not informed in any way about him or anyone else being under investigation.”
Flynn’s attorney’s said in a letter Monday that Flynn will not comply with a Senate Intelligence Committee subpoena for documents related to its probe of alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election, invoking the his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Flynn was fired by Trump in February after it came to light that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about the nature of his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Though Christie was kept out of the administration, he was recently named by Trump to lead a White House commission to combat drug addiction. Christie’s name has also been in the mix as possible replacements to embattled White House staffers.
