Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suspects Donald Trump’s reasons for holding onto sensitive government documents were probably a lot more “stupid and childish” than people expect.
“People are like, is he going to give them to a foreign government, or sell them to somebody, or blackmail people? You don’t understand Donald Trump. It’s just to show off,” Christie, who is challenging Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said during an interview on CNN Wednesday evening.
“He wants to continue to act like he’s president. He can’t live with the fact that he’s not. So, that’s why he kept those documents. It seems childish and stupid, and it is, but that’s the reason why in my view.”
Trump was indicted on 37 criminal counts this month over his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. Federal prosecutors accuse him of retaining sensitive defense information and obstructing government efforts to retrieve it, putting national security at risk.
Trump initially argued that everything he took was automatically declassified. However, CNN on Monday obtained a July 2021 tape ― reportedly a key piece of information in the Justice Department’s case ― in which Trump told book researchers he possessed “highly confidential, secret” materials that he did not declassify as president.
Trump has since argued he wasn’t actually holding any secret documents, he was just pretending to for the sake of “bravado.”