Chris Christie: Trump investigations make GOP primary win ‘uncertain’

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said the various investigations into former President Trump make a hypothetical GOP presidential primary win “uncertain.”

“No, I don’t think that the field [is] starting to look like Trump,” Christie said on ABC’s “This Week.” “In fact, you know, when you’re indicted in one place, and you’re facing investigations [in] two others, it makes you at least an uncertain winner. But again, he’s the former president. So of course he’s going to be the frontrunner. He has the best name ID in the race, of anybody else running, but you already have four other candidates now who are announced in.”

Trump earlier this month became the first sitting or former U.S. president to face criminal charges and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. A 2024 candidate to retake the White House, he’s fundraised off the Manhattan prosecutor’s probe he has branded a “witch hunt.”

At the same time, Trump is also under scrutiny from two special counsel inquiries and another district attorney probe in Georgia.

Trump, who declared his 2024 bid back in November shortly after the midterms, has since been joined in the Republican primary ring by his former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R).

Other top Republicans, including Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) are also widely considered potential contenders.

Christie has not announced his plans regarding a possible 2024 White House run.

“This is not going to be a 2016 field,” the former governor said on Sunday, adding that there are “going to be six to eight candidates that are going to be running.

“It’ll be a normal-type sized field. But certainly it’s not going to be a field that Donald Trump has cleared,” he said.

Hutchinson and Haley are “substantial people who are going to have something to say,” Christie added.