President Trump offered John Kelly the job of FBI director the day after he fired James Comey in May 2017, according to a forthcoming book.
Reminiscent of how Comey claims Trump demanded loyalty of him before he was removed, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt writes that the president also told Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who was at the time his homeland security secretary, that he would need to be “loyal to him, and only him.”
“Kelly immediately realized the problem with Trump’s request for loyalty, and he pushed back on the president’s demand,” Schmidt writes in Donald Trump v. The United States, according to excerpts reported by Axios on Sunday. “Kelly said that he would be loyal to the Constitution and the rule of law, but he refused to pledge his loyalty to Trump.”
The report does not mention how Trump reacted to Kelly’s response, but the president eventually picked Christopher Wray, a former Justice Department official who had become a partner with the law firm King & Spalding, to be his nominee to lead the bureau.
Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, never told special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators about this conversation, the book contends, because the president’s lawyers limited the scope of their two-hour interview.
The book also talks about how “Kelly was repeatedly struck by how Trump failed to understand how those who worked for him — like Kelly and other top former generals — had interest in being loyal not to him, but to the institutions of American democracy.”
“Kelly has told others that Trump wanted to behave like an authoritarian and repeatedly had to be restrained and told what he could and could not legally do,” Schmidt says.
“Aside from questions of the law, Kelly has told others that one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO — a move that Trump has repeatedly threatened but never made good on, which would have been a seismic breach of American alliances and an extraordinary gift to Putin,” the book adds.
“Kelly has said that having to say no to Trump was like ‘French kissing a chainsaw,'” Schmidt reports.
In his memos detailing conversations with Trump, Comey claimed the president asked him for a pledge of loyalty during a solo dinner meeting at the White House in late January 2017.
After Comey said he would give Trump “honesty,” the president responded by saying, “That’s what I want, honest loyalty.” Comey wrote that he replied, “You will get that from me,” but noted that their ideas of what that meant likely were different.
Trump denied he ever made such a request. “I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty,” he tweeted in April 2018. “I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His ‘memos’ are self serving and FAKE!”
Schmidt’s book is due for release on Monday. The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment on the excerpts reported by Axios.
