Chris Christie claims Trump once sought dirt to destroy Ivanka and Jared Kushner’s relationship

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS: Former New Jersey Gov Chris Christie (R) claimed that President Donald Trump once sought ammunition to derail his daughter Ivanka Trump’s relationship with Jared Kushner.

Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Christie said Trump “gets himself worked into a lather” and “will say and do anything to get what he wants” when he reaches that point.

Christie did not deny Trump’s ability to win people over. He pointed to the widely discussed March 2025 dinner where longtime Trump critic Bill Maher walked away impressed, describing the president as “gracious and measured.” 

“I just laughed,” Christie said. “Bill Maher, probably one of the most cynical people I’ve ever met in my life, tells you how skilled Trump is. He can charm you. He has the ability to do it. The problem is he doesn’t have the patience or the discipline to do it regularly, and so he gets himself in a lather.”

Trump allegedly sought dirt on Kushner family

Christie went back to Ivanka Trump’s early relationship with Jared Kushner, claiming that once the pair united, it “became clear to Donald Trump that they were going to get married.”

The idea didn’t sit well with Trump, according to Christie. “He has said this publicly, that he would have rather had her marry Tom Brady, which might be the only popular thing he could say in New England, to say nice things about Tom Brady,” Christie laughed. “But he was not thrilled, let’s say, about this.”

At the time, Christie was serving as the Attorney for the District of New Jersey and had already prosecuted Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, in 2005.

The latter pleaded guilty to assisting in filing false tax returns and retaliating against a witness, among other charges, and was sentenced to 24 months in prison.

Christie revisited the case’s most notorious detail. Charles reportedly schemed against his own sister, a cooperating witness, by hiring someone to entice her husband and secretly record the encounter. He then reportedly sent the tape to her on the day of her son’s engagement party.

Even with that history on the table, Christie said Trump wanted more.

"He asked me to go out to dinner and said, 'Do you have anything more on the family, so I can break this up?'" Christie said.

"I thought to myself, haven’t I given you enough? Her prospective father-in-law hired someone to entice his own sister’s husband, videotape it, hold it, and then send it to her on the day of her son’s engagement party. I looked at him like, not enough, huh, to say, 'That might be a family I want to stay away from.' But that’s Trump. When he gets himself worked into a lather, he will say and do anything to get what he wants."

Chris Christie slams Republicans as ‘lemmings,’ targets Lindsey Graham

Christie also took aim at Republicans in Congress, accusing them of falling in line out of fear rather than principle and calling them “lemmings.”

He singled out Sen Lindsey Graham as his prime example.

"The best example of this right now among the 535 members of the United States Congress is Lindsey Graham," he said.

"This is a man who only cares about his title. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else. He is a vapid, vacant human being. And for him to say the things he has said about Donald Trump in the past, and all he wants to do is suck up and play another round of golf and pray that he gets the endorsement for the United States Senate."

Christie added, “I’m disgusted by what my party looks like in Washington.”