Christie blames events leading up to Jan. 6 on Trump ‘C-team players’

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said that the events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were “driven from the top” and executed by “C-team players” around then-President Trump.

Christie said during an interview Sunday on ABC News’s “This Week” that it was “C-team players” who told Trump what “he wanted to hear” during his last few months in office.

“You got a bunch of people around him by the time we got to the end, with very few exceptions, that were C-team players, at best, on their best day,” Christie added to host George Stephanopoulos.

“So C-team players get in there and they tell the boss what he wants to hear through. We’re putting people on the outside who were telling him this is over and you need to concede. He didn’t want to hear that.”

“Let’s not kid ourselves. This was a driven from the top process executed by C-team players, and that’s why it looks like aa Keystone Cops operation, because it was,” Christie said. 

Separately, Christie, a former ally of Trump’s who has been feuding with the former president, said the Jan. 6 panel investigating the Capitol attack would have more credibility with Republicans if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had not rejected GOP nominees.

“I wish Nancy Pelosi would have done differently,” he said.

“The problem now is that because she dictated — for the first time in my memory — who the minority party could have on a committee, it does affect to some extent among people in my party, the credibility the committee has,” he said, before adding that he thought the committee was doing “important work.”

Pelosi rejected GOP candidates who had consistently raised questions about the validity of the election and backed overturning the results in certain states, arguing that including them on the panel would have damaged its integrity.

“All things that you see were driven from the top. The president made it very clear that he did not want to concede the election…C team players get in there and they tell the boss what he wants to hear,” @GovChristie says on former Pres. Trump, Jan. 6. https://t.co/Arv8B3VJd7 pic.twitter.com/JhooFgWutE

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 12, 2021