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Chris Christie: Attorney general job ‘would have been a hard thing to turn down’

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday he would have considered joining the Trump administration if offered the right position. 

“The fact is that I wanted to be the governor of New Jersey, and if the president had offered me something that really was compelling me to get to Washington, I would have made the sacrifice to do it,” Christie told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

Christie, a former U.S. attorney, also suggested that he would have accepted an offer to serve as Trump’s attorney general.

{mosads}“Given that I’ve spent seven years of my life in the Department of Justice, that would have been a hard thing to turn down,” he said.

But Christie also showered praise on Trump’s attorney general pick Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), arguing that he is a well-qualified choice to head the Justice Department, and slammed Democrats for focusing their opposition to his nomination on “ideological differences.”

“Jeff Sessions has been a United States attorney, he’s been the Alabama state attorney general in addition to being a United States senator. This is a guy who understands the law, who believes in justice and believes in enforcing the law and the Constitution.”

“That’s what they should care about. We’re always going to have ideological differences,” he added.

Christie, a former Republican presidential candidate who endorsed Trump early on in the 2016 primaries, was a rumored pick for attorney general. 

Christie previously led Trump’s transition team, but was abruptly ousted from the post and replaced by Vice President Mike Pence shortly after the November election amid concerns about the transition process was floundering. He has largely stayed out of the spotlight since then. 
 
The New Jersey governor over the course of the presidential campaign was simultaneously dealing with legal proceedings surrounding the Bridgegate scandal.