Chris Christie paints a vengeful picture of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner – whose family Christie has feuded with for years – in an upcoming memoir, according to excerpts reported on by Axios and The Guardian.
According to The Guardian, the former New Jersey governor writes in his book, “Let Me Finish,” which is scheduled to be released later this month, that Kushner was behind his departure from the Trump inner circle after the 2016 election.
“Steve Bannon … made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago,” Christie said in his book.
The Guardian reported that Bannon told him at his firing as Trump’s transition chairman that “the kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” referring to Kushner.
Axios reported that Christie wrote: “In Bannon-speak, the KID is only one person. Not Donald Jr. Not younger son Eric. Not Ivanka or Tiffany. The kid is Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump and the son of the real estate developer Charles Kushner, a man I once sent to prison.”
According to The Guardian, Kushner did not want Christie to take over the administration’s transition team and in a meeting with Trump, Christie wrote that Kushner “implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up.”
“Just a lot of feelings – very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years,” Christie wrote, according to The Guardian.
According to the excerpt published by Axios, Christie refers to Trump as his “friend,” and says he “did everything I could to make sure my friend Donald reached the White House fully prepared to serve.”
“But a handful of selfish individuals sidetracked our very best efforts. They set loose toxic forces that have made Trump’s presidency far less effective than it would otherwise have been,” Christie wrote, according to Axios.
Kushner and Christie’s animosity extends far beyond politics. Christie, back when he was a US attorney in New Jersey, prosecuted Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, more than a decade ago. Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness – his brother-in-law – and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission.
Kushner called the prosecution of his father “obviously unjust,” in a 2014 interview with The Real Deal, a New York real estate news publication.
Christie at the time called it a “great victory for the people of New Jersey.”
CNN’s Gregory Krieg contributed to this report.
