Ex-chief of staff warned Trump on impeachment
WASHINGTON — John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff who during his tenure made it clear he detested the job, expressed regret about leaving and implied that he could have helped stave off the impeachment inquiry now threatening Trump’s presidency.
Kelly, who left barely on speaking terms with the president, said he warned his boss to pick a successor in his mold, meaning someone who would confront him. “I said, whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’ someone who won’t tell you the truth — don’t do that,” Kelly said, according to the Washington Examiner, which covered his remarks at a political summit it hosted Saturday in Sea Island, Ga. “Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached.”
Kelly left the administration last December and has since joined the board of Caliburn International, the umbrella organization of a company that runs the largest housing facility for migrant children.
On Saturday, he did not mention his successor, Mick Mulvaney, by name. But his comments appeared to pin the blame for the fast-moving impeachment inquiry on Trump’s embattled acting chief of staff, who said at a news conference this month that aid to Ukraine had been withheld because the president wanted to pressure the country to investigate his political rivals, only to later backpedal. And Kelly framed Trump himself as a careening leader who needed to be controlled by his aides.
“I have an awful lot of, to say the least, second thoughts about leaving,” Kelly said. “It pains me to see what’s going on, because I believe if I was still there or someone like me was there, he would not be kind of, all over the place.”
During his early days as chief of staff, Kelly, a retired four-star general, was credited for bringing order to a chaotic West Wing. But by the end, he found the task of...