The governor wants a New Jersey fugitive returned, but instead of merely just asking his friend the president, he made his case on-air. Watch video
TRENTON -- Gov. Chris Christie had a request for President Donald Trump: Have convicted murderer Joanne Chesimard extradicted to New Jersey.
The way he chose to send Trump the message seemed guaranteed to reach him.
I'll be on with @TuckerCarlson at 9pm tonight. Tune in.
-- Governor Christie (@GovChristie) March 25, 2017
Having sent up a flare on Twitter half an hour before, Christie sat on Friday evening for an interview with Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson -- the same Fox host with whom Trump had just done a sit-down interview a week earlier.
"I hope that what the Trump administration is going to do is, before we take any further steps with the relationship with Cuba, first and foremost, return this fugitive from justice so that she can rightfully serve the rest of her term for murdering a police officer."
In February, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the president would conduct a "full review of all U.S. policies towards Cuba."
March 25 marks the 40th anniversary of Chesimard's 1977 conviction in New Jersey superior court as an accomplice in the shooting death of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster.
Although being convicted as an accomplice to murder carries a life sentence, Chesimard would have been eligible for parole after serving 25 years.
However, a little over two years after her conviction, November 2, 1979 Chesimard was broken out of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in an armed jailbreak orchestrated by the Black Liberation Army. She fled to Cuba in the early 1980s and has remained there ever since as a guest of the Cuban government.
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"[Foerster] gave his life. And his family has lived for the last 40 years with the knowledge that his murderer has been living with impunity in an island protected by that government," said Christie. "It's outrageous."
Last month, New Jersey's senior U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez introduced a bill with fellow Cuban-American U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to "reform" the State Department's annual human trafficking report. Both men were angered by a 2015 decision to improve Cuba's ranking from one of the world's worst offenders to the "tier 2 watch list" of its report.
But it was only after having dinner with Rubio in Florida last month that the president announced that he and the senator shared "very similar views on Cuba."
On Friday night, the governor made clear he hoped the president would instruct his new Secretary of State to make Chesimard's return part of any change in Cuba policy.
"This is something that Secretary of State Tillerson and others in the Trump administration should make a top priority," Christie said.
That the governor chose to make his case about Chesimard's return via Twitter and on cable news rather than simply telephone the man he called a "dear friend" of 15 years speaks as much to the president's voracious consumption of TV news and social media as it does the nature of Christie's relationship with him.
Earlier this month, Kellyanne Conway, a Camden County native and counselor to the president told the Record that "the president likes Governor Christie a lot" and that "they talk all the time."
But on Fox News on Friday night, the governor explained to Carlson that his private chats and phone calls with the president rarely involve policy and usually revolve around personal friendship.
"I talk to him frequently," said Christie, "and sometimes, I just sit and we talk about things that have nothing to do with government. We talk about families and sports and other things. We're friends. We've been friends for a long time."
Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.