Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that Donald Trump once asked him for dirt about his future in-laws to try to break up his daughter Ivanka’s wedding to Jared Kushner.
Christie, speaking at a Harvard event on Monday, said the alleged request came when he was still U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, an office he held from 2002 to December 2008. Jared and Ivanka got married in October 2009.
“It became clear to Donald Trump that they were going to get married,” Christie, 63, said. “He was not thrilled, let’s say, about this, and I was still the prosecutor at the time... And he asked me to go out to dinner, and he said, ‘Do you have anything more on the family, so I can break this up?’”
Christie continued: “I thought to myself: ‘Haven’t I given you enough?’”
As prosecutor, Christie in 2004 negotiated a plea agreement with Charles Kushner, Jared’s father, who pleaded guilty to—and served prison time for—illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering.
The witness tampering charge stemmed from how Kushner planned to blackmail his brother-in-law, William Schulder, who was cooperating in the investigation against him. Kushner aimed to record a sexual encounter between Schiller and a prostitute whom Kushner had hired, and then send the tape to his sister.
Christie later said Kushner committed “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had ever prosecuted.
In his 2019 book, Let Me Finish, Christie wrote that Jared pushed him out as head of Trump’s 2016 transition team because he was “still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago.”
Trump doesn’t seem to mind Charles Kushner’s past, if his actions as president are any indication.
In addition to pardoning Kushner at the end of his first term, Trump announced after the 2024 election that he would nominate him for the cushy job of ambassador to France and Monaco. Kushner was confirmed to the post last July, and then went on to accuse France of not doing enough to combat antisemitism, drawing backlash from President Emmanuel Macron.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House, Jared’s firm, Affinity Partners, Ivanka’s talent agency, WME, and the State Department for comment.
Like his father, Jared, 45, appears to have found some favor with Trump. A White House adviser for the entirety of the president’s first term, he and Steve Witkoff have been central figures in U.S. negotiations over the Israel-Gaza war, the Russia-Ukraine war, and—most recently—the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran.
