Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL), speaking on Fox News following the House Oversight Committee’s hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray, bagged former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for defending Wray’s job performance at the FBI.
“Chris Christie said on Fox News earlier today that Christopher Wray had delivered extraordinary results. The problem is they’re just extraordinarily awful,” quipped Gaetz.
He added: “And Chris Christie criticized us for engaging in fundraising theater during this committee and I’m not gonna take my notes on fundraising from a guy who was a lobbyist and was snout-down in the lobbyist financial money laundering situation when he was raising money from them as governor of New Jersey.”
WATCH:
Savage Matt Gaetz:
"I’m more likely to take Chris Christie’s exercise plan than I am his fundraising strategy." pic.twitter.com/EQaDlkfv0L
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) July 13, 2023
Rep. Gaetz was referring to Christie’s time period immediately following the governorship, where he told the New York Times, “I want to have fun, and I want to make money.” The former governor and current Republican presidential candidate went on to found his own consulting firm, worked on behalf of gambling company DraftKings, and reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from lobbying on behalf of a biotechnology corporation. During the pandemic, Christie earned nearly a quarter-million dollars lobbying the Trump administration to tap its Covid-19 relief fund for Christie’s clients.
“I’m more likely to take Chris Christie’s exercise plan than I am his fundraising strategy,” joked Gaetz to audible laughs in the Fox studio.
On Monday the Florida congressman participated in grilling FBI Director Wray about a series of controversies that House Republicans claim amount to evidence that a two-tiered justice system exists, one that pursued criminal charges against former President Donald Trump while ignoring allegations of bribery against President Joe Biden. At the hearing, Rep. Gaetz asked Wray directly if he was “protecting the Bidens” from investigations into an alleged bribery scheme and lucrative business dealings that led to criminal charges being levied against embattled first son Hunter Biden.
Wray was asked by other Republican members on the committee to release details about cocaine recently found at the White House, which he denied to do, while refusing to confirm or deny that an FBI investigation into President Biden is ongoing. In his opening statements, House Oversight Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) erupted as he described a litany of lawbreaking he contends is corrupting the FBI from within.
“They [the FBI] want the taxpayers they censored, the parents they labeled [as domestic terrorists], the pro-life Catholics they called radical, they want them to pay for a new FBI headquarters and they want FISA re-authorization of the 702 program in its current form [that they were caught abusing 200,004 times],” thundered Rep. Jordan.