Mark Paoletta, former general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration, revealed Friday that former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly — who recently weighed in on the election against Trump — worked to thwart his boss’s plans instead of carry them out.
Kelly in an interview published earlier this week said he believed Trump met the definition of a “fascist,” giving ammunition to Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” Kelly told the New York Times.
Paoletta responded to Kelly’s comments in a post on X, saying:
I worked in the White House with John Kelly, and I don’t believe a word he says. He was a terrible chief of staff who dishonestly kept information from the President to pursue his own agenda, an unelected former military official substituting his judgment for the duly elected President.
He gave two specific examples of how Kelly, a retired Marine general, worked to surreptitiously undermine Trump.
He said in 2018, Trump asked OMB Director Mick Mulvaney to find money in agency accounts to build the wall to secure our southern border.
“Mulvaney asked OMB Deputy Russ Vought and me as OMB GC to do a deep dive on this project, and with the help of superb career staff, we found a ton of money at the DOD that we could use to build the wall,” he said.
However, he said, “Kelly prevented Mulvaney from presenting this plan to President Trump.”
“Several months later, in a meeting, Trump 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.’ Kelly would not set up policy time for Mulvaney to discuss the plan with Trump,” Paoletta said.
He said after this exchange, Mulvaney presented the plan and the President authorized this strategy.
“John Kelly was insubordinate and duplicitous by refusing to provide the President with lawful options to implement the President’s policies,” Paoletta said.
The former Trump administration official also said due to the way the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was set up, in 2017, he wanted Trump to shut it down and direct the Justice Department to investigate election fraud.
He said at the time, he was the counsel to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was the co-chair of the commission, and that he had developed a list of directives from previous presidents to the Justice Department to investigate a specific matter, so that when he made the recommendation, he could show it was supported by history and tradition.
He said “in a meeting with Kelly and others, I made this recommendation and shared the list of examples of Presidents directing DOJ to engage on specific matters.”
“Kelly said he would never show this list to the President because it would be terrible if President Trump knew he could do this, his life was tough enough in dealing with the President, and he did not want him to know this. To my knowledge, President Trump was never made aware of these examples,” Paolettta said.
“John Kelly thought he knew better than President Trump and was opposed to many of his policies. As Chief of Staff, Kelly dishonestly tried to thwart President Trump’s policies, and on the wall funding he was totally fine with not doing everything possible to stop illegal aliens flooding into our country and murdering innocent Americans, all in order to protect the bloated bureaucracy of his DOD,” he added.
Paoletta also said Kelly would frequently threaten to resign, and posted headlines about it, adding “those were just the most public reports.”
“John Kelly was not a soldier’s soldier – at least not at the White House. His most-used skill as COS was threatening to resign. These were just the most public reports – as 2018 went on, it was increasingly common to see the COS office dark and empty when Kelly had stormed off for the day. You have an assignment, do it well until you finish,” Paoletta said.
He also said Kelly went AWOL after Mulvaney was named as his replacement, even though he was supposed to help with the transition.
“When Mick Mulvaney was named his replacement on Dec 14th, it was announced Kelly would stay through rest of year to help with transition. He did no such thing. He maybe came in once more to do any meaningful work. We were getting ready for a shutdown, which happened on Dec 22nd, and Kelly was AWOL to help out during the run up to it. Just checked out,” he said.
“John Kelly’s nightmare scenario isn’t a ‘fascist’ White House – it’s a White House without John Kelly in it. Why else would he think threatening to quit all the time would have any impact on the president? He was a terrible Chief of Staff who whined and sulked because he was no longer a BFD General who everyone obeyed without question. He was just a staff guy to a President, and he hated it. He did a disservice to the nation by being dishonest, insubordinate, and quitting on the job before he resigned,” Paoletta concluded.
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