Chris Christie tore into Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and then some. | AP Photo Christie jolts crowd with prosecutorial takedown of Clinton

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the first of Trump’s rivals to endorse him, name-checked the nominee much earlier in his remarks this time around.

Christie referred to the real estate mogul about 10 seconds into his convention speech, apparently eager to avoid a repeat of the mockery he drew in 2012 when he only got to then-nominee Mitt Romney’s name at the 16-minute mark after spending much of his prime-time speech talking about himself.


But it was another name — presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — that Christie spent most of his time discussing Tuesday night.

Despite opening his remarks by noting his 14-year friendship with Trump, Christie quickly dropped any pretense of offering humanizing personal anecdotes.

Instead, he argued a case against Clinton.

“Tonight, as a former federal prosecutor, I welcome the opportunity to hold her accountable for her performance and her character,” Christie said, in a speech sure to add to chatter that he’s angling for the Attorney General slot in a Trump presidency.

“We’re going to present the facts to you…Since the Justice Department refuses to allow you to render a verdict, I’m going to present a case now, on the facts, against Hillary Clinton,” Christie added, to chants of “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

Clinton, for her part, quickly responded Tuesday night, tweeting: “If you think Chris Christie can lecture anyone on ethics, we have a bridge to sell you,” with a link to a New York Times timeline of the bridge-closing scandal that has dogged Christie for over two years.

Christie didn't limit his case to her email scandal, also tearing into Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, ticking off disasters country by country while punctuating his remarks with “Is she guilty, or not guilty?”

The crowd ate it up, roaring back “Guilty!” in its most enthusiastic response to a speaker since former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s frothy speech Monday night.

View Chris Christie’s prosecutorial takedown of Hillary Clinton at the RNC New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spoke on Tuesday at the 2016 Republican National Convention

“We’re not done yet — the indictment is hardly complete,” Christie urged the crowd after it once again drowned him out with shouts of “Lock her up!”

Christie clearly reveled in the call-and-response too, cracking a grin after asking the crowd, “As to Hillary Clinton, the charge of putting herself ahead of the American people, is she guilty or not guilty?”

Christie responded defiantly to a post-speech question from MSNBC on whether he was an “imperfect messenger” for the ethical case against Clinton given the Bridgegate scandal.

“Do we have Hillary Clinton calling me imperfect? I mean, you don't want to talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” he said. “I'll put up my record against Hillary Clinton's on ethics, on accomplishment, on achievement, on honesty, any day in the week and I would just give the secretary a warning, this is not a fight she wants to pick,” Christie added.