Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who counseled Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign before becoming a prominent opponent of the former US President in recent months, will officially announce next Tuesday his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Reuters cited a source familiar with the matter as saying.

Christie, 60, enters the contest as an apparent underdog, six years after his failed presidential campaign in 2016.

In a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted May 9-15, only one percent of Republicans indicated that Christie would be their top choice.

According to the source, Christie is scheduled to begin his campaign on Tuesday during a town hall meeting at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, confirming an earlier report published by Axios.

Christie has called on the Republican party to get past Trump's unfounded allegations that the 2020 election was rigged, notably in his book "Republican Rescue", Reuters mentioned.

He told Axios in March that even if Trump was the Republican nominee in 2024, he would not vote for him.

A former federal prosecutor, Christie has maintained that he is the only candidate that is able to go head-to-head with Trump, unlike other potential rivals such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who have mostly avoided confrontation.

His second term as governor was ruined by the so-called Bridgegate scandal, in which two of his assistants were charged with intentionally closing lanes at the George Washington Bridge to New York City to punish a local mayor who refused to back his re-election campaign.

As the attorney for New Jersey, Christie prosecuted Charles Kushner, the father of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, for tax fraud and other violations.

During the early phases of the 2016 campaign, he and Trump traded jabs. However, only weeks after withdrawing from the race, Christie backed Trump, bolstering his candidacy at a vital point.

But Christie was ousted as the head of Trump's White House transition team three days after the latter's shocking victory.

Christie has often criticized Trump since the January 6, 2021 riots that saw Trump supporters storming the US Capitol.

He also lambasted Trump for the Republicans' poor results in the 2022 midterm elections and labeled the former US President's behavior "unacceptable" after a federal jury convicted Trump accountable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.

It is noteworthy that Christie ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 but was defeated by Mitt Romney.

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