Washington (CNN) Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recalls in his new memoir watching the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape alongside then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump ahead of its public release in 2016, writing that the tape sent his top-ranking campaign staff scrambling to devise a response.

The 2005 tape, first reported by The Washington Post in October 2016 , caught Trump in a hot mic moment while being interviewed by the show "Access Hollywood." Trump, on the tape, bragged that he could grope women because of his celebrity status and that sometimes he would "just start kissing them."

"The tape was hard to watch. It was harder to listen to. But we watched and listened to the 'Access Hollywood' video all the way to the end. The words sounded crude and vulgar playing through the small speaker on Hope Hicks's laptop, even more so with Donald sitting there with us," Christie wrote in his book, "Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics."

Christie said the team got the sense that the tape would be released about an hour from the time they started watching it "and that time was already flying by."

Familiar faces on the Trump campaign team, including Jared Kushner, Rudy Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon, then began brainstorming a response strategy in anticipation of the tape's imminent release. The team, according to Christie, squabbled over whether to say "if anyone was offended."

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