By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
A day after President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, he offered the bureau’s top job to then-Homeland Security John Kelly.
But there was a catch: Kelly must pledge absolute loyalty to Trump, according to the forthcoming book Donald Trump v. United States, as reported by Axios.
To get the job, “Kelly needed 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,” New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt writes in the book. “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 doesn’t indicate how Trump responded, but a month after firing Comey, Trump nominated Christopher Wray to be the FBI’s next director.
Kelly later served as Trump’s chief of staff.
During the special counsel investigation, Robert Mueller didn’t find out about Trump offering the job to Kelly, whose interview with Mueller was limited to two hours.
Kelly announced he was resigning as chief of staff on December 2018.
Before Comey was fired, he said Trump urged him to pledge loyalty, and he refused, the former director has repeatedly said.
