Christie says Meadows immunity deal makes Trump Jan. 6 case ‘much tougher’

GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie said Sunday that former President Trump’s Jan. 6 federal case is more difficult now that his former chief of staff Mark Meadows has accepted an immunity deal.

“Donald Trump is not going to be able to beat [President Biden] from a courtroom in Washington, D.C., while he’s fighting his indictment on the January 6 case,” Christie said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“And let me tell you, that indictment got much tougher for him to beat when his own chief of staff has now accepted immunity and will testify against him about the lies he told in the aftermath of January 6, and what he was told by his own people about the fact that he had lost the election,” he continued.

Meadows secured an immunity deal with special counsel Jack Smith in order to testify before a grand jury in the election interference case, ABC News first reported last week. The outlet said Meadows testified before a grand jury empaneled to hear evidence in the case on at least three separate occasions.

He reportedly told the grand jury that after the 2020 election, he consistently advised Trump that his claims of widespread fraud were baseless. Christie has previously warned Trump that this latest development could harm him, saying last week the former president should be “desperately worried.”

Christie also took aim at Trump on Sunday for not finishing “what he started” in his first term.

“And so, look, if he couldn’t do it in the first term with good people around him, imagine what he would do in a second term with the clowns and rogues’ gallery he would have around him in a second Trump term, because that’s the only people that would actually work for him,” he said.