“I Worked With John Kelly In The White House And And Don’t Believe A Word He Says”

“John Kelly has done a disservice to the nation by being dishonest and insubordinate, quitting on the job, and now smearing Trump to help elect perhaps the worst presidential candidate in history.”

Even far left publications have, in the past, called Kelly a “dishonest man.” They called him “a liar and a coward. That [….] is what John Kelly is.”

I Worked With John Kelly In The White House And Don’t Believe A Word He Says

By: Mark Paoletta, The Federalist, October 29, 2024:

As Donald Trump gains momentum to be reelected on Nov. 5, the anti-Trumpers have unleashed their last desperate wave of smears to stop him. Most despicably, but not surprisingly, former Chief of Staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly gave interviews to The New York Times and The Atlantic in which he claimed President Trump fit the definition of a fascist and supposedly made favorable comments about Adolf Hitler.

I worked in the White House with Kelly, and I don’t believe a word he says. He was a terrible chief of staff who dishonestly kept information from President Trump to pursue his own agenda, an unelected former military official substituting his judgment for the judgment of the duly-elected president.

In 2018, after Congress refused to appropriate adequate funding to build the wall along the southern border to secure it against illegal alien crossings, Trump asked Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney to find money in agency accounts to build the wall. Mulvaney asked OMB Deputy Russ Vought and me, as OMB general counsel, to do a deep dive to find the money, and with the help of superb career staff, we found a ton of funding at the Department of Defense we could legally use to build the wall.

But Kelly prevented Mulvaney from presenting this plan to President Trump. Several months later, in a meeting, the president said, “Mick, I asked you to find me money, and you haven’t.” Mulvaney responded, “I found the money, but I have not been able to brief you.” As the chief of staff, Kelly would not set up policy briefing time for Mulvaney to discuss the plan with President Trump. After this exchange, Mulvaney presented the plan, and the president authorized this strategy.

This was not the first time I saw this type of insubordinate and corrupt conduct. Because of the way the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was set up under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, I wanted to have the president shut it down and direct the Department of Justice to investigate potential election fraud. At the time, I was counsel to Vice President Mike Pence, who was the co-chair of the commission, and I had developed a list of previous presidential directives to the Department of Justice to investigate a specific matter so that when making this recommendation I could show it was well supported by law, history, and tradition. In a meeting with Kelly and others, I made this recommendation and shared the list of examples of presidents directing the DOJ to engage on specific matters.

Kelly said he would never show this list to the president and that if the president knew he could direct the DOJ, it would make Kelly’s life much more difficult. He said it was tough enough dealing with the president and he was not going to share the list or the recommendation. To my knowledge, President Trump was never made aware of these examples.

Continued……