Chris Christie: There Is No One With More Influence Over Trump Than Jared Kushner

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made headlines in early 2016 when he dropped out of the presidential race and subsequently became the first major Republican to endorse Donald Trump.

Soon after, he found himself leading then-candidate Trump's transition team. By the time Trump won the election in November, Christie says, he and about 140 other staff members had compiled some 30 binders filled with shortlists for various positions and strategies for legislative undertakings.

But days after the election, Christie was out — and so were his binders.

Now, Christie has written Let Me Finish, a memoir addressing his time with the Trump team, run as a presidential candidate, and Bridgegate — among other things.

NPR spoke with Christie about his new book.

The interview, below, has been edited for length and clarity and contains some excerpts that do not appear in the audio version.

It is hard to think of a campaign that continues to cast quite such a long shadow two years into a presidency — but questions about Russia continue to dog and define Trump's presidency. So start there. You said you were in Trump Tower all the time in 2016. Was there collusion?

Listen, I don't think there was — I never saw any evidence of it. ... But I could tell you that I wrote in the book I don't think the campaign was organized enough to collude. I saw it from a whole bunch of different angles.

I hardly think that they were organized enough to put together a Tom Clancy-type operation with Russia. Now, I could be proven wrong on that because, as I said,