Trump ally Chris Christie calls election challenge 'national embarrassment'

Campaign adviser warned the president that 'elections have consequences'

Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for the effort of President Trump to challenge the US election results, speaks alongside Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump's personal lawyer. Ms Powell was removed from Mr Giuliani's legal team following her insistence that 'communist countries' interfered with the election. EPA PhotoShow less

Chris Christie, President Donald Trump's former 2020 election campaign manager, has criticised his legal campaign to challenge the November 3 election results.

The former New Jersey governor and close ally of Mr Trump called the legal effort a “national embarrassment".

Mr Christie's remarks to ABC's This Week  came after more setbacks for Mr Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

On Saturday, a Pennsylvania court rejected a claim by Mr Trump’s legal team to invalidate mail-in ballots in the state.

US District Court Judge Matthew Brann said his legal campaign in the state, which is led by his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was an attempt to “disenfranchise seven million people”.

Mr Brann wrote that the president's team had presented "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" in their complaints about mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

Mr Christie said there was probably no evidence for Mr Giuliani’s claims.

“When they go inside the courtroom they don't plead fraud and they don't argue fraud. It must mean the evidence doesn’t exist,” he said.

"I have been a supporter of the president. I voted for him twice. But elections have consequences and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn't happen."

This is only the most recent setback for Mr Trump’s effort to challenge the election results.

On Sunday, his campaign announced it was no longer working with a member of his legal team who drew wide-ranging criticism for conspiracy theories over the November 3 election.

"Sidney Powell is practising law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team," Mr Giuliani said.

"She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity."

Mr Trump tweeted on November 14 that Ms Powell would be a member of his legal team, alongside Mr Giuliani and campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis.

The team has tried to overturn election results in states, including key battlegrounds Pennsylvania and Michigan, which voted for Mr Biden.

Mr Giuliani's announcement about Ms Powell came just days after a 90-minute briefing at the Republican National Committee in Washington.

There legal team members argued that a broad "national conspiracy" to deny Mr Trump's re-election was under way.

Ms Powell notably claimed that Mr Trump had beaten Mr Biden in a landslide, despite the fact that the Democrat was predicted to get 306 electoral college votes to Mr Trump's 232.

Mr Biden won the popular count by more than six million votes.

Ms Powell also claimed that Cuba, Venezuela and other "Communist" nations may have been linked to a hacking of the election that took millions of votes from Mr Trump.

Before working with Mr Trump's legal team, Ms Powell defended his former aide Michael Flynn, who is accused of lying about his Russia contacts during the 2016 presidential election.