Advisory Opinions - Hookers and Kushners | Interview: Chris Christie

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie joins Sarah Isgur and David French to give advice to all young attorneys and aspiring legal professionals. Plus: some war stories from Trump Force One. The Agenda:—Frenemies—Christie’s time as a U.S. attorney—The difference between a podium and a lectern—No class reunions at the White House—We’ve all crashed out at some point—‘I’m not a potted plant’—Should Christie wear make-up?—VeggieTales and David French Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to advisory opinions. I'm Sarah Isger. That's David French. And today we are doing life advice and professional advice for lawyers with a special guest with a special guest and a special guest and and I'm not going to tell you who it is. I'll just, I'll give you two hints. One, I hated him in 2016. Two, he's the person I most look forward to seeing on Sundays. If you've run into me in the last couple months, this is all I'm talking about. I know it's very annoying, but we are obsessed with quince in our household. I have lived in their summer cotton dresses. Husband of the pod is obsessed with the linen shorts and even the comforter on my son's bed has been

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Chris Christie. I didn't hate you in 2016. You didn't know who I was in 2016. Well, that's exactly right. So I didn't hate you. I hated your candidate. I didn't hate you, though. She was by the way, she was by the way the rudest candidate to deal with on that entire stage. After her first debate, my second at the Reagan Library, we were the two considered to have done the best in that debate. So as you'll remember, we were very much in demand the next morning. for the morning shows, and when you do that at the Reagan Library, that means you're out there at 3.30 a.m. getting ready to do it. So we're in makeup chairs next to each other. And I turned to her and I said, hey, Carly, good morning. I said in a good job last night. And she turned and looked

at me and she said, yeah. And that was it. I want to be clear. First of all, nobody is more competitive than Carly Fiorina. Second of all, this would explain so much because if you remember, remember, we were not in the first debate. And I am quite proud of what happened next, which is I basically had this whole like mini campaign to get us in that second big kids debate using math. Like all of my skills finally came together, my beginnings as a math major in college, transitioning into polysion history, like all, everything about Sarah made for magic in that July as I sent out memos about, you know, various statistical probabilities and shamed everyone into including her in the second debate. Donald Trump did us some help there also with the, hey, look at that

face comment. Fast forward to New Hampshire and post this whole little incident that you mentioned, that was it three in the morning, by the way, like none of us are at our chipperest best? And you, sir, I am told, we've never talked about this. I am told that you kept a off that New Hampshire debate so that what Marco could talk about his hand size? That was later. The hand size was later. No, no. Yeah. Oh, yeah. New Hampshire was the demolition of Marco Rubio by our guest, Governor Chris Christie. That was New Hampshire. I remember that very well because I thought

Rubio was having a mental health event. He was repeating himself. So it was an all, it was the first all-male debate. It was two days before the New Hampshire primary. And absolutely, in the all-male debate, that is when discussions were had that perhaps a female candidate might have been helpful. Well, it might have been helpful for Carly. It certainly was going to be helpful for me. And so, yes, I did the very best I could to debunk your ridiculous memos from July and keep her off the stage in February. Yes, I plead guilty to that. And part of that had to do with her extraordinary collegiality when we, when we met with each other in July, I sit to my team afterwards. Let me tell you something. I don't know when I'm going to get back at her,

but it's coming. And it took a few months, but we took care of business as Jersey people normally tend to do. Okay, let's back up. Let's do the Chris Christie origin story. You're the 55th governor of New Jersey, but frankly, that's not what we want to spend most of this podcast about. We want to talk about law days. You're real like in the trenches, war stories. You're the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. And first of all, everyone says the best job that they've ever had is as an AUSA. Now, you technically weren't an AUSA, but you were the U.S. attorney. You've had a lot of jobs before and after. Was U.S. attorney the best job? Absolutely. It's not even close. I mean, I loved being governor, and it was an amazing opportunity.

But if you told me that I could look back on my life and pick just one job I get to do, it would have been U.S. attorney. It was the best seven years of my professional life, no doubt about it. And you had a lot of, you know, prosecutors in that office doing fun stuff. Any standout cases? And can you please tell the story of your two prosecutors who maybe were not best friends? Sure. Standout cases. We did the first terrorism case post 9-11. It was against a British, an Indian-born British national named Hamet Lakhani, who was attempting to sell shoulder-fired missiles to a Yemeni terrorist

group in New Jersey who wanted to shoot commercial airliners out of the sky at Nirk Airport. and he was attempting to buy these shoulder-fired missiles from Russia. And in days long gone, we partnered with the Russian FSB to create a sting on this guy. Ultimately, Russia delivered dummy shoulder-fired missiles through the port in Baltimore, where we were waiting with the FBI and Mr. Lacani. he took he paid he took delivery of the missiles he walked out with these you know crates of missiles and to the waiting arms of the FBI and um he he wound up uh doing the rest of his life in federal prison and died in federal prison that was clearly a noteworthy case we probably cannot go through

my u.s attorney career without mentioning the name Kushner yeah gonna ask about that gonna ask about that Jared Kushner's father, the current ambassador to France in what this world has now become, was pled guilty to 19-count criminal complaint, never got to the indictment stage for tax fraud, FEC fraud, and in a statute that I'm sure Sarah and David are both enormously familiar with, violations of the man act, which is causing prostitutes to cross state lines to commit acts of prostitution. Can we just take a little footnote here that in law school, when you learn about the man act, it is like this giggle-worthy thing that the law about prostitution is called the man act. Sort of like, I mean, I went to law school like at, I guess the denou ma of the man

show with Jimmy Kimmel and stuff. So like it all kind of like fit into that vibe. So you don't forget it. Everyone remembers the man. act. The story of that case is pretty simple. It arose out of a family dispute between Charles Kushner, his brother and his sister over the family business. This gets really weird, by the way. Just buckle in. Yeah. And what happened was we were in the midst of investigating Charles Kushner for basically a garden variety tax fraud. And we received a call from a lawyer in New Jersey, well-respected lawyer in New Jersey, who said to me, you need to meet with Charles Kushner's sister. And I said, look, I don't meet with, you know, witnesses. I said, go see the AUSAs and meet with them.

No, no, no, Chris, you have to take this meeting. Believe me. All right. So in comes Charles Kushner's sister, Esther, Esther's shoulder, and her husband, Billy Scholder, and their lawyer. And they tell me a story where Billy wound up having a one-time affair with a young woman. He met in a diner in New Jersey, in Somerville, New Jersey called, believe it or not, the time to eat diner. And as it turns out, that that assignation was videotaped and unbeknownst to Mr. Shoulder. And the videotape was sent to Esther's shoulder.

on the day of her son's engagement party with stills, digital stills in the envelope as well, if she didn't put, for young people who won't understand this, it was something called a VHS tape into the VCR, another thing they would not understand, which is the way you played videotapes back then. So I'm listening to this saying, like, so what do I have to do with this? and she said to me,

I know my brother did this. And I said, how do you know your brother did this? And she then turned to her husband to tell the story that essentially he used to go to this time to eat diner every morning for breakfast. This very attractive young woman came up to him one day at the diner

and said that she had had car problems. She's from New York. Her car got towed. Could he please bring her back to the motel she was staying in? he agreed, brought her back into her motel on Route 22 in Somerville, which no joke was called the Red Bull Inn. She tried to get him to come up to her room, and he refused. And she said, well, look, I don't know anybody around here.

My car's going to be ready tomorrow. If you're going to be at the same place for breakfast, is there any way you can come back and pick me up and bring me to the BMW dealer, which was about three quarters of a mile away from the Red Bull Inn. so they decide to exchange cell phone numbers which is a key part of this story so they do the next morning of course she calls him of course he goes to the to the motel but this time she says she's not quite ready yet could he come upstairs he goes upstairs she begins to seduce him and he says on the videotape i don't i don't know you i mean you could be an axe murderer

And she looks at him and says, do I look like an axe murderer? And he says, no, no, you don't. And then he said, you could be someone trying to blackmail me. And she goes, do I look like someone who would try to blackmail you? And he says, and he says, no, unfortunately. And after that, the clothes are taken off and nature takes its course. Oh, so all you have to do to execute a blackmail is deny your blackmail. is deny your blackmailing.

Exactly right. And so as I'm listening to the story, there was one thing as a trained prosecutor that stuck out to me. I turned to him. I said, do you still have her cell phone number? Now this was 18 months later in front of his wife. And he stared down at the conference table

and said, I do. And I said, well, you'll need to give me that. And so he hands it over to me. And his wife, I said, so you think, Charles set this whole thing up, and she goes, of course he did. Charlie plays on people's weaknesses. She puts her hand on her husband's shoulder and points to the videotape, which she also brought to give us, and said,

Billy has a weakness? Charlie played on it. So we went and then subpoenaed her cell phone records for that day. When they came back, five minutes after the videotape ended, she made a phone call to a Schenectady's, cell phone. We then subpoenaed those records. They were for a private investigator in Schenectady, New York. We then subpoenaed his cell phone records, and he made a call two minutes after her call to a phone that was registered to the East Orange, New Jersey Police Department. So we call the East Orange PD

to find out whose cell phone this is. It is the brother of the private investigator. We then have the records for the East Orange PD. And one minute after he gets the call from his brother, he calls the cell phone of Charlie Kushner. So first of all, let's give a hat tip for the good use of cutouts. That was some good cutout work. I'm impressed. But you know what? This is why federal prosecutors have the conviction rates that they do once you're in their sights they're like those little you know yappy dogs like once they clamp on they're never letting go well you know as i say to them once you let them in the house they're not just going to look for what they're looking for they're going to look at everything and you know so here we go we now have this we then

um execute search warrants at the same time on the prostitutes apartment in the upper east side of Manhattan, the private investigator, and the police officer. Which none of this even works without the sister, not just cooperating, coming to you. Yeah, and she had cooperated earlier in the tax fraud and FEC fraud case because the way she originally became what caused the family dispute was she tried to make a donation to a Republican Senate candidate, and it was returned to her saying she had already reached her federal limit. And she said, well, I haven't made any contributions at all this cycle. Straw donations. Yes. So Charlie was making straw donations from the partnership and

forging his sister's signature on the records. And committing a federal crime and doing that as well, but you know. Correct. And so that was when she, and she got called into the grand jury for that. When he found out that she had gone into the grand jury, that's when he came up with this scheme in order to intimidate her from any further cooperation. And the way it turned out, you know, we search the, we go and execute the search warrant on the cop. He immediately flips and says it was Charlie Kushner. He gave me $25,000 to go and get this hooker and to do this scheme.

The private investigator refused to talk, wear it up immediately. And the prostitute would not let the FBI into her apartment. And they called us and said, she won't let us in and I said you have a search warrant knock the door down and they go oh it's a really nice apartment we don't want to do that and I said well then slip a couple of hundreds under the door I don't care what you have to do but get into the apartment and and when when she we went I eventually got into the apartment and questioned her she identified Charlie Kushner as the guy who hired her from a photograph and you know Kushner what he did was he had the private investigator wait

and hold that tape for a few months and he intentionally had it delivered on the day of his nephew's engagement party, a party he was going to attend himself. Ladies and gentlemen, your U.S. ambassador to the great nation of France. That's correct. And so, you know,

and one of the great, you know, Donald Trump, to bring him into this, when I brought that case, as he was known to do at that time, he tore the front page off of the New York Post, which Charles Custer was on as he was making his initial appearance. And I still have it. He wrote in Black Sharpie, way to put the bad guys away, Chris, and signed to Donald Trump. Wow. Wow. Maybe that'll be in my next book. I'm not sure. You talked about the U.S. attorney as your favorite job. And U.S. attorneys are more in the news now than

maybe any time since the, you know, the controversy surrounding the Bush administration firing his attorneys during his two terms. How quaint was that, by the way? It was a huge, one of the biggest scandals of the entire Bush administration was that he was firing U.S. attorneys to replace them with political appointees, which they always are political appointees, for partisan reasons. Heavens to Betsy, where's my fainting couch? people people's careers were destroyed over that their reputations destroyed it had incredibly

serious consequences for other people we lost obviously a attorney general over it but some of the lower level staff who don't you know they didn't get their reputations back now that we don't think that's a real scandal but like yeah just just so we all jog our memories over that and by the way I was I was on the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired which I didn't discover until well into the scandal, as Sarah just put it, when they were going to respond to the congressional subpoenas, I got a call from the Deputy Attorney General's office saying, by the way, one of the things you'll see is that you were on the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired that was sent from the Justice Department over to the White House as suggestions of who to get fired, and the White

House took you off the list. And so I said, well, I'd like to talk to the DAG about why I was on the list. And the DAG doesn't want to talk about that. I'm like, well, this is going to get public today, I assume. And he said, yes, this is his chief of staff. And I said, well, you tell the DAG that if I don't hear from him and I can't talk to him about the reasons for why, when I'm asked at my next press conference, I'm going to say it was a personal vendetta by the DAG. And I'm going to offer my resignation. And he goes, oh, let me get back to you. And the DAG got back to me. later that day and told me it was because the DAG's office thought I had been too aggressive on a corporate fraud prosecution that I brought against Bristol-Myers Squibb.

And that's why ultimately I was put on the list, but I was apparently removed by both counsel's office and ultimately I learned in a deposition that happened surrounding all this later on by Carl Rove off of the list. So that's a perfect segue into the question that I have. U.S. attorney, you're coming into an office that has hundreds, if not thousands, of preexisting cases that's working, investigations, cases, appeals, all of this. But you're also a political appointee who's coming in with a new administration who's going to have different priorities than the outgoing administration. How does a U.S. attorney in a functioning, when things are going the way

they're supposed to, and you can tell us if that's how it was for you, if you felt that the process happen the way it should have happened. If it's happening the way it's supposed to happen, how is a U.S. attorney balancing the new priorities of the new administration with all of the pre-existing continuity that exists in an office that's enforcing, that's helping enforce in federal law, sometimes in years-long cases with lots of legacy momentum and inertia? So how do you balance that? Want to know what the governor has to say about that? Oh, hold on a sec. our aura frame just started over as you've heard me say before we set ours to switch photos one per day and they go in chronological order so when we get to the end of our photos and it starts over

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support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Here on advisory opinions, we get a lot of questions from listeners. Should I go to law school? Which law school should I choose? And while we love your questions, sometimes the best answers come with a little more context and a lot more time.

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you plan for what comes next. Their experts will guide you through every step of the process, school selection, application strategy, essays, and more. Visit college solutions.com to learn more. That's college solutions.com. Because getting into a school, shouldn't feel harder than going. Enter the referral code advisory and get 20% off. And we're back. Governor, take the floor. In the new Bush administration, I did not get sworn into office until January of 2002. It took about a year for that process to work through in a blue state like New Jersey. Our two senators were Bob Torricelli at the time and John Corzine, and they held me up for quite a period of time before ultimately they signed the blue slips and I was able to be

confirmed in December. So the Bush administration had a first set of priorities when they first came into office about the U.S. attorneys, which essentially surrounded something the president called Project Safe Neighborhoods, which was a program for us to do more gun cases, taking more illegal guns off the streets. And that remained a priority. Then before I arrived on the job, you had the corporate fraud scandals of Enron and Arthur Anderson, which then had the president order there to be set up a corporate fraud task force. And given how many corporations were headquartered in New Jersey at the time, we were part of the corporate fraud task force. And then, of course, 9-11 happened. And so then terrorism became priority number one. So those were the three main

priorities, David, that they, that were new to them. And what the Bush administration did was they gave us new AUSA slots for each one of those priorities. And so, you know, to do that, then you had these folks who you newly hired or transferred into those slots and hired people to backfill someplace else. So you could do everything at one time. You could do these new priorities that the administration had set, guns, corporate fraud, and obviously terrorism, without really impeding, at least in New Jersey, without impeding the ongoing cases that were going on, and kind of the traditional things that the office had done over the course of its recent history. So I never found it to be a problem. The other piece was, I guess because we were

doing these things, I never got a call from DOJ saying, do this or don't do that. It never happened in seven years. And when I formally got the job the week before I was going to be sworn in, I went down to meet with Attorney General Ashcroft. And one of the things he told me in that meeting was, you will never hear from me about a case that you should not do as long as you can tell me that what you're doing complies with the law and is done with the pursuit of justice in mind. I'm going to give you the discretion

to do what you want to do. And he held to it. He held to it in his four years for sure. I never got a call from John Ashcroft saying, you know, what the hell's going on down there? Or, hey, why aren't you prosecuting this person or even this type of crime? And so that was the way you were able to do it.

they gave you additional resources to address the priorities that the president had set. And Sarah said this when we were on ABC this week. It's absolutely appropriate for an administration to set priorities for the Justice Department and say these are the things in the law enforcement area we want you to prioritize. What I don't believe is appropriate is for them to say, hey, go prosecute Sarah Isker or go prosecute David French. That's completely inappropriate for a white. House to do. And that's what this White House, in my view, is engaged in, in addition to being

engaged in firing people for having done what was lawful for them to do in their law enforcement role, whether they were AUSAs assigned January 6th cases or FBI agents assigned the investigation of January 6th and other matters as well. And these were not investigations that were lawless. These were lawful investigations. And they were, they were, I'm, I'm, I'm presuming in many cases, directed to be a part of the event. This was not a volunteer basis. They're being asked to, they're brought into it as part of their normal job and then losing their job because of it.

Well, that's the way it works normally is, you know, supervisors at the FBI assign agents to certain matters. The agents don't get to pick and choose. And U.S. attorneys assign AUSAs to certain matters when they come in based upon their, their experience, their, you know, skills and abilities. and, you know, you don't get a choice. Not like an AUSA can come to me, unless they were coming to me

with an ethical conflict, you know, oh, I can't investigate this company because my brother works there. Okay, that's fair. I don't want to put somebody into a situation where they're ethically compromised. But other than that, they don't get to say no to you.

It's not the way it works. It is a, being U.S. attorney is a benign dictatorship in that regard. and so, you know, that's the way it normally works. And you don't get penalized for having followed the lawful direction of your Senate-confirmed boss. Best advice you ever got as a baby attorney, best advice you've ever given as a super old guy now. Thank you, Sarah. Super old guy.

Boy. Well, thanks for having me. It's good to see you. and uh governor this is typical this is a typical rhetoric from sarah isker i have been called every manner of decrepit ancient you name it so you're in good company they look i just hope to live long enough to say the same thing to her um best advice i got as a as a baby attorney was be prepared that there was no i did trial work um as a young attorney i defended doctors in medical malpractice cases.

And those were complicated trials, complex facts sets. And the partners who I worked for told me that for, you know, every hour you were going to spend in the courtroom, you needed to spend two and a half to three hours outside the courtroom getting ready. And so, you know, being completely versed in the facts of your case and having the time to think about how to use those facts strategically to represent your client, it's, it's just to me for a young lawyer, there's no advice that could be better than that. Because if you are well prepared, you have a very good chance of doing well and representing your client in a way that they

deserve. Best advice I've given as a, what was it again, because they're really older? Incredibly. seriously cryptkeeper levels of old. What I've said to those as a very old attorney is do something you like as a lawyer. Being a lawyer is a tough job and it's a time-consuming job and it's a job that if you do it the right way, takes a lot away from your family life and other personal life. For God's sake, don't hate what you do. You know, when you first become a lawyer, you're probably not sure what you want to do. So you're going to have to try some things, but when you find what you like,

grab onto it and don't let go. And if you're doing something you hate, for God's sake, get out and go on to something else because it's too much hard work to also hate it on top of it. And I found when I was doing private practice and I was doing trial work, I loved it. And so prepping was arduous but not torturous. and I think if I had hated the work, it would have been torturous. And so when I tell young attorneys all the time is find what you like and you'll figure out a way to make money at it. So when you were on the way up, did you have your eyes set on the U.S. Attorney's Office or was this more of a target of opportunity?

This is something where you're doing well in your career, you're progressing in your career, and this was, this just opened up, kind of manna from heaven, so to speak, or you oriented your career. I want to be a political appointee. This is what I want to do. And if so, how did you orient yourself in that way? And to be clear, just to make this a ruder question, you know, when we go back to your high school yearbook, you know, does people have the like quotes underneath? Like in Sam Alito's yearbook, who I know you fellow Jersey in, it says like one day we'll sit on the Supreme Court. Like if I go find your yearbook, is it going to say? Chris Christie is running for president in 30 years? No, it will say that I was class president for all four years.

So there is a little foreshadowing there, but no, it won't say that underneath my picture. It'll talk more about my high school girlfriend and the fact that I was the catcher on the varsity baseball team and captain of the baseball team. But it won't talk about being U.S. attorney. And no, David, it was not something that I aspired to. I really didn't think about it until I was in the midst of being New Jersey Council to the George W. Bush for president campaign, which came about because my partner, one of my law partners, Bill Palatucci, had been the executive director of the Bush Quail 92 campaign in New Jersey, and in that capacity had gotten to know George W. Bush. And when George W. was thinking about running for president, Christy Whitman was the governor of New Jersey. Jersey, and she was kind of playing footsie politically with Elizabeth Dole and was not committing

to George W. So he came to us and said, hey, are you willing to put together a group of prominent New Jersey Republicans to come see me at the governor's mansion in Texas? And, you know, that was a dangerous assignment because you were going against your governor who did not want people to be endorsing George W. Bush at that time. But we did it. And we put together a great group of people. It led to like five or six meetings at the governor's mansion. And at the end of it, Governor Bush asked me if I would be counsel for the New Jersey campaign. Now, fortunately, you know, we didn't have a close election in New Jersey in 2000. So it wasn't like I was counsel in Florida. But once that happened and President Bush won,

Carl Rove actually called me and said, like, would you like to come to D.C.? Is there something you'd like to do? And I said, really, what I'd love to do is be U.S. attorney. And he said, well, he said, we have some input on that, obviously. He said, but you've got to go through a process at the Justice Department first. So let me send your stuff to DOJ. And if you make it through the DOJ portion of the process and it gets to the White House, you know, we'll certainly take a hard.

look at you. And that process then went on for the better part of nine months. And I was actually nominated by the president on September 10th, 2001. And so it was not something that I aspired to my whole career. You wouldn't have found it under my yearbook picture. But I had seen some great U.S. attorneys in New Jersey in my time, you know, guys like Judge Fred Lacey, Judge Herb Stern in my younger part of my career, and then Mike Chertoff and Sam Alito. So there had been some really outstanding people who had that job.

And so, you know, it was very attractive to me in that way as a real challenge. And that's why I asked for the nomination and went through. And actually, as it turned out, the last two people being considered for the job by President Bush were me and Rosemary Alito,

Sam's younger sister. And I went to getting the nod over Sam Alito's younger sister. By the way, speaking of high school, if anyone wants to Google this story, it's from 2015 in the Wall Street Journal. The headline is, the class of 1980 waits to see if Chris Christie will attend reunion. And the photo is the most 1980, New Jersey. I mean, it is perfection for the vibe, if you will. And I will read this. So people weren't sure if you were going to attend your 35th high school reunion. Fair enough.

Even after he took office, Mr. Christie attended his 30th reunion in 2010 and was so happy to hang out at the after party that he and his wife, Mary Pat, stayed there until 2.30 a.m. Quote, I kept the troopers out late that night. Mr. Christie said Wednesday, I really love these people. There you go. Did you go to your 35th reunion? That's the question. I did. I did. It was during the presidential campaign, and I could say that some of the campaign staff were not thrilled at the idea that I was taking time away from Iowa or New Hampshire to go to my 35th reunion. But I did, in fact, go. And all of them that night wanted a commitment that if I won, that the 40th reunion would be at the White House. So giving away snow and winter, I said, yes, no problem. I figured I'd figure it out if it ever happened. Were you an excellent student? And I asked that because I think often,

yeah, this is the joke that George W. Bush made, right, at his commencement address, the A students go on to be judges and professors and stuff, and the C students go on to be president. I'm curious where you fall. And the excellent student, were you a grinder? Were you a voracious reader? What was, I mean, I know you're playing baseball and chasing girls.

Let's put that aside. I just chased one girl in high school in a quarter. But no, look, I was in between, but I wasn't an outstanding student. I was a grinder. I had to work really hard to do the things that I got done. And I also was very focused on having another life outside of the classroom. So president of the class at high school, captain of the baseball team, you know, president of student body at the University of Delaware.

But I went to Delaware because my family really didn't have any money. I got admitted to Boston College, which is where I really wanted to go. And we just couldn't afford it. And so the University of Delaware offered me some serious scholarship money, like two-thirds of the cost of school. And my father, the CPA, said to me, like, we might want to go back and look at Delaware again. So I went there. I did well at Delaware. I wanted to go.

I was not going to get into a top 15 law school. And so I decided I wanted to, I was going to practice in New Jersey, so I'd go to a New Jersey law school. So I, you know, I went to Seton Hall and I did horribly my first semester at Seton Hall, horribly. And I even thought about dropping out. And I remember at that point coming home to my parents and saying, like, maybe this isn't for me. And I went to a professor who I wound up later being involved with politically. He's a Democrat. He was my contracts professor.

And a great guy named Wilfredo Carabio. And I said to him, you know, I don't know if I'm cut out for this. And he asked me about what my study process was and all the rest. And I'd gone through it with him. And he said, well, you're just studying like a college student, not like a law student. And you've got to learn a study like a law student. And he offered to mentor me in the second semester. And I had him second semester for the second half of contracts.

and he really changed my trajectory of my law school career. He taught me how to study. And so he's a very important guy to me, you know, all through my law school career. Ultimately, he served in the legislature and left the legislature, unfortunately, right before I became governor. But, you know, so that's the kind of student I was, Sarah. They're not going to be writing any books about me as a, you know, as a great student, but I was good enough, and I think that combined with my personal relationships allowed me

to have the career I've had. When we get back, we're going to learn the difference between a podium and a lectern and why it's important. One of the things that you have to do as U.S. Attorney has managed some very big egos. AUSAs, God love them, are public servants, but they're not. They're public servants with pretty big egos in my experience. They live in this kind of ivory tower world. They're cloistered from the real world for good reason in some respects, you know.

And the U.S. Attorney, though, didn't usually get into setting up trial teams. I usually allowed the lower level supervisors to decide who would try what cases. Only the most high visible cases did I ever get myself involved in it. There was a white-collar fraud case, a bank fraud case that was being tried. And it was being tried by a senior lawyer in the office. And for whatever reason, the supervisor of that group decided to pair him with a young lawyer who I had hired actually out of Maine Justice at the recommendation of Mike Chertoff. And a very bright young guy, but not wildly experienced.

as a trial lawyer, but he wanted to become one. And they thought, well, good, you could second seat this trial and really learn from this. That was not necessarily this guy's personality as like to be a supplicant, so to speak. And the senior lawyer was the kind of guy who wanted his second seat to be a supplicant. So this set up a real personality conflict between the two of them. And I heard that there was some conflict going on in the midst of the trial prep. And I asked the supervisor, you sure this is going to be fine? He goes, it's going to be fine.

It'll be great. So during the midst of the trial, I get a call from the judge who's trying the case, saying to me, hey, can you come over here? I need to talk to you. So, of course, and I go over to see the judge. And he says, there's a problem with this trial. I don't know if you heard what happened today. But no, I hadn't heard anything yet.

He said, well, he goes, there's obviously some tension between the trial partners for the government. And he said, at one point, I made a ruling that the lead lawyer did not agree with. And he asked if he could approach the podium to argue. And his second seat said, under his breath, but loud enough that enough, most people heard it, it's not a podium, it's a lectern. And the lead lawyer turned to him and said, go fuck yourself. And in front of the jury. To his own side.

To his own, to his own trial partner. That is spectacular. At that point, the judge decided to ask for a brief adjournment, to order a brief adjournment and called the two of them back into chambers and said, look, I don't care, whether you hate each other or not. You have an obligation to act professionally and knock this off. And I said, I can't believe I haven't been told about this yet. And he's like, well, I just think you need to intervene here. And I said, judge, totally get it, no problem. I go back across the street to our offices, to his, to the supervisor and say, you know,

when one of our lawyers tells his partner to go fuck himself in front of the jury, that might be something I need to know. If you're wondering, you know, on the chain of information, how far does it have to go up? That should go to the top. He's like, well, I was trying to handle it myself. I'm like, no. So I called the two of the men and said to them, like, essentially the same thing the judge said. Like, you represent the United States of America. I don't care how much you hate each other. You never have to work with each other again. But you have to finish this trial successfully and professionally. So something I never thought I would have to do as U.S. attorney, which was to remind

these highly educated lawyers that you should not tell one of you to go fuck yourself during the trial in front of a jury. And just to show that, like, I was not immune to the use of such language, we had a very big case grown out of the Corporate Fraust Force called United States versus Walter Forbes and Kirk Shelton. It was the Scendant Corporation, which owned Avis Rent-A-Car and a number of other things. They were engaged in wild, wild fraud of inflating earnings, falsely, et cetera. And we're trying this case.

It's supposed to be tried in New Jersey, obviously. It's a New Jersey company brought by the New Jersey U.S. Attorney's Office. But the judge who caught the case, may he rest in peace, did not want to try the case. he thought it was too complicated. And so Brendan Sullivan represented Walter Forbes. Brendan Sullivan, by the way, is a very famous attorney. He's in the Iran-Contra hearings where he tries to advise his client, Oliver North. And they're like, sir, you know, shut up.

And he goes, I'm not a potted plant. I'm his attorney. And the I'm not a potted plant becomes lawyer lore. Everyone says, I'm not a potted plant for at least 20 years later. I feel like it's fallen out of favor, but I want to bring it back. Let's bring it back. And so he makes a motion to change venue to Connecticut because the New Jersey forum was inconvenient to his client who lived in Connecticut.

And the judge granted it and sent us to Hartford, Connecticut. So we got to, so now I've got to move three trial lawyers, literally the trial went on for eight months. We had to move them to Connecticut. They left their families for eight months. It was awful. And in the midst of this, apparently, the guy who was third chair did not like some of the assignments he was getting, so just decided to leave. He just left and didn't show up for trial for three days. Now, I didn't know this. No one told me. So I called the lead lawyer just to check in with them after this had happened. And he said, oh, no, things are going much better now that I won't use the guy's name.

This lawyer has returned to the trial. I go, what do you mean, return to the trial? And the guy got really quiet on the end of the phone, and he goes, well, you know, look, you could talk to Charlie and Michelle, who were in my front office about that. Don't worry about it. Everything's fine. So I then call Charlie, who was my executive assistant U.S. attorney, and Michelle Brown, who was the counsel to the U.S. attorney, down to my office and say,

What happened in Connecticut when so-and-so left the trial for three days? And the two of them look completely pale. And they're like, well, we were trying to handle it. We didn't need to elevate it to you. I said it's the single biggest trial going on in the office right now. One of our guys goes AWOL, and you don't think you have to elevate that to me. And I was young. I was probably 42 at that point.

And I just started screaming at them. and with every curse word you can imagine. This is about 8.30 at night in the office. And I am, who do you guys think you are? Do I need to take you to the door and show you whose name is on the door? I mean, I am just obliterating the two of them. Now, in the federal building, we had folks who were on the janitorial staff were people with developmental disabilities.

And the guy who took care of the cleanup on the seventh floor where my office was, was this six-foot-five guy named Bruce. Wonderful guy, big-hearted, fabulous guy. Bruce hears me screaming at them as he's coming to empty my garbage can, and he turns away and walks away. I get done excoriating these two, and then Bruce comes back to empty my garbage can.

Now, Bruce never said much of anything to me except if I were there, except good evening, how you doing, boss? He used to call me boss. How you doing boss? He comes in and he picks up the garbage can and he shakes his head. And he said, boss, I've seen some ass kickings in my life. But I ain't ever seen an ass kicking like that.

And he, like, dumped my garbage can into his bigger garbage can and walked away. And I was like, that was the moment I knew I had probably got overboard. When Bruce the Chanditor was like, oh, my God, I've never seen an ass kicking like that in my life. I had to go in and apologize to the two of them. So you learn all kinds of things about temperament and the use of language when you're in that job, dealing with people who have large egos and trying to make sure that you manage them in a way that's good, but also don't beat them up. And I think that's a good lesson for any lawyer who wants to get into any supervisory position.

You know, these are human beings you're dealing with and you need to be firm, but there are moments when you can go overboard and people really take it seriously coming from someone that they have report to. I would be totally remiss if I did not ask you to put on your adjudicator hat and adjudicate a dispute between Sarah and me. And that dispute is, should you go to law school? And here is my assessment. Go to law school if you want to be a lawyer, or if you're not really sure what you want to do in life and you can get into a good law school, that law school is a dramatically option expanding choice. It gives you a lot of. of additional options in life. Sarah says, and Sarah, please tell me if I'm steel manning you or not,

that that's crazy because when you go to law school, you're going to get channeled into law. And if you don't want to be a lawyer, you're going to find yourself very miserable. Or if you are very ambivalent, you might find yourself very miserable. So law school is for people who know they want to be lawyers. I say it's for people who want to be lawyers and people who honestly aren't quite sure yet. They're not ready yet to make a decision. And I advise law school as an option expanding choice that will give you a lot more options. Where are you on this? I don't think you should go to law school if you have no interest at all in being a lawyer. But I do think, look, when I went to law school, I absolutely wanted to be a lawyer. I was committed to wanting to do that.

But once I started practicing law, I wasn't so sure that it had been the law. the right choice and went on to go into politics and public life, and I think I had much more credibility in those realms as a lawyer. So I do agree with David's part that it is option expanding. I also think that it teaches you a way to think that is valuable no matter what else you pursue. And that's why you see so many CEOs are lawyers. That's why you see that so many entrepreneurs also are lawyers like it teaches you a way to critically think that i think will serve you well the rest of your life so i i guess i kind of agree with both of you a bit i do agree with sarah that if you have no interest in being a lawyer then don't go i mean it that's not what you should be

doing but i don't think just because you went to law school you have to be a lawyer and i don't think it's limiting. And I don't think the only way you're going to get shoehorned into being a lawyer is if you let yourself be shoehorned into being a lawyer. In the end, no one can look at a legal education and say, you are no better for it. I think you are always better for having had a legal education. And it may not be that practice of law is your thing, but it will make you a better fill in the blank, whatever else you're going to try to do. A better writer, a better reader, a better thinker, a better critical thinker, and I think a better mediator in life in general, unless you're a complete jerk. And we know plenty of those. But no education would have helped

them. They would have never been able to be a good mediator. But when you are someone who has a good personality who cares about that kind of thing, the law, the legal education, I think, helps with that too. I like to grade people based on the answer they give to this question. And despite your B-plus reputation, I'm actually going to give that one an A-minus. Well, let me say this. I'm just, I really want to retire now that I got an A-minus in anything from Sarah Isker is really overwhelming because when she first came aware of me in 2015,

2016, I wouldn't have gotten an A-minus for my tie, let alone anything else. Certainly nothing that came out of my mouth. Although I do wonder, how did you feel the night that your candidate was not in New Hampshire on the debate stage? Did I do okay with Marco Rubio? I was sitting in a very sad hotel room with a box of relatively cold pizza. It was really cold that week, as you remember. So even getting the pizza delivered, like it was already pretty cold by the time it got up

there and it was just one of like the most depressing nights of my life up to that point because the most depressing time would come two months later when she endorsed Ted Cruz and we were sitting on the Ted Cruz for president bus and I felt like a conquered that the people who get conquered and then are brought in the wagon trail basically and like chains or whatever in the back and I sat there with my headphones and just listened to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat, that was the most depressing day of 2016. I'm depressed for you. Wait, do you remember when Carly then, I think it was even that same day. We went to some event and like she's, it's when he announces her as his vice presidential pick and she fell off the stage. I remember very, very well.

And in fact, the funny part of that story was when that happened, I was actually on Trump Force One. with the current president of the United States and we together watched her fall off the stage and he looked at me, he looked at me and just started to laugh and he said, what a loser. So if that makes you feel even worse, that's what was going on in real time. I will tell, maybe I can end with one,

since I brought up Trump Force One, one Donald Trump, Trump Force One story. We were campaigning together prior to Super Tuesday. And he has a bedroom in the airplane. And he retreated to the bedroom when we were about 15 or 20 minutes out from landing. And I heard him yell, Chris, come here. So, okay, I walk back to the bedroom. And he is putting makeup on himself.

he does his own makeup you might be shocked to learn and he says to me come here that's what he goes you need a little makeup and I said yeah no I'll pass and he said no no he goes you look tired you got circles under your eyes you need me to give you a little bit of makeup and I and he's got like the powder puff and he's ready to go and I'm like seriously you are not putting makeup on me I'm drawing the line there no chance And he goes, all right, all right. And he finishes putting his makeup on. And he looks at me and he says, you know what's going to happen when we walk off the plane

together? And I said, no, what's going to happen? He goes, they're going to say, who's the old guy with Trump? Really. And I said, you know, like when people ask me at times about, like, you know, I've known Trump now for 23 years. And we've obviously had an interesting relationship over that period of time. but when they ask like how do people like him so much or whatever it's stories like that

there is a part of Donald Trump it's become increasingly and increasingly less visible as he's gotten more and more angry and bitter and arrogant but there was that part of him that was really funny and really charming at times and that was one of those moments that was a legitimately funny thing to say like you know who's the old guy you know with Trump and I laughed. And, you know, there was that part of him that I think, unfortunately, for him, and now that he's president again, unfortunately for the country, you know, he doesn't show us nearly as much of anymore. I don't even know if it's in him anymore. He's so angry and bitter. I mean, I think he may be the angriest and bitterest president of my lifetime. And that's saying

something since I lived during the Richard Nixon period as well. before we go for those of you listening to this podcast on a friday it turns out david french has been cheating on us with holy post media and they made a theme song for when david joins their podcast and uh gov i think you need to hear this too guess what day it is it's french friday it's french friday so grab your price and say hooray david french is here to play on Friendly Day. It's friend to my day. Oh, wow. You've made it. I've made it. Because, Governor, you don't know, may not know the backstory of that voice.

There's this children's cartoon called Veggie Tales that was huge. Sure. Yeah, yeah. So Veggie Tales, created by Phil Visher, Bob the Tomato, Larry Cucumber. That's Phil Visher, that theme song. So for me, you know, evangelical guy, my kids were raised on Veggie Tales. I mean, like, this is, this is peak stuff here. All right, with that, the 55th governor of New Jersey and my ABC co-star. I mean, I'm going to elevate our status here.

Thanks for coming. David, thank you, Sarah. Thank you for having me. Thank you, governor. I don't know.