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Chris Christie Accuses Jared Kushner of ‘Political Hit Job’ in Upcoming Book

Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and once a top Trump aide, says the president’s son-in-law orchestrated his recent fall from grace, all over a decade-old family grudge.
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Chris Christie, once the chair of Donald Trump's transition team after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, is about to publish a new book about his short-lived service on Team Trump. A copy of the book, "Let Me Finish," was obtained by the Guardian for review.

According to the review, one of the most prominent parts of the book involves Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who, according to Christie, made it his goal to take down the ex-governor over a decade-old grudge.

In 2005, Christie writes, while he was serving as a federal attorney, he prosecuted one Charles Kushner, a real estate tycoon and the father of Jared, on witness tampering and tax evasion charges.

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The book tells the story of how Charles executed a plot involving a sex worker and a hidden camera to blackmail his own brother-in-law Bill Schulder to ensure the latter kept his mouth closed about Kushner's operations. Apparently the plan backfired, because Kushner was eventually convicted, pleading guilty on 18 charges and serving 14 months in a federal prison.

In his book, Christie says Jared Kushner went out of his way to make sure Trump denied Christie a position in his administration — at one point even while in the same room as Christie himself.

"He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn't state one fact to back that up," Christie writes about the incident, which he says took place in April 2016. "Just a lot of feelings — very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years."

Kushner reportedly insisted it "wasn't fair" his father had to spend a year in prison, adding that the matter involving Schulder should have been kept in the family or handled by rabbis.

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While Trump did give Christie a job on his transition team, it was Kushner who had the final say, the former governor writes, adding that he was told so privately by Steve Bannon, the notorious former White House chief strategist who eventually fell out of Trump's graces as well.

"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 writes.

Christie eventually left Trump's team; certainly not lacking in ambition, he aspired to the position of vice president, US attorney general or chair of the Republican National Committee. He repeatedly rejected other positions Trump offered, including those of labor secretary, homeland security secretary and ambassadorships in Rome and the Vatican, the Guardian recalls.

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