In the memoir “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” Jared Kushner, who was the senior advisor to his father-in-law, former President Trump, alongside Ivanka Trump (who was also a senior advisor to her father), Kushner alleges that the Trump administration’s chief of staff, John F. Kelly had a “Jekyll-and-Hyde” personality and once even shoved Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump.
Kelly was hired as Trump’s chief of staff following the resignation of Reince Priebus, a lawyer and politician who had previously served as the chair of the Republican National Committee. Kelly, who succeeded Priebus after being appointed by Trump following his position as secretary of homeland security, is 72 years old and has a long record of military service.
Kushner writes that both he and Ivanka viewed Kelley as “consistently duplicitous,” but detailed a moment when Kelly showed what they believed were Kelley’s true colors.
“One day he had just marched out of a contentious meeting in the Oval Office,” Kushner writes about Kelly. “Ivanka was walking down the main hallway in the West Wing when she passed him. Unaware of his heated state of mind, she said, ‘Hello, chief.’ Kelly shoved her out of the way and stormed by. She wasn’t hurt, and didn’t make a big deal about the altercation, but in his rage Kelly had shown his true character.”
Kushner claims in his book that Kelly then went to see Ivanka in her office on the second floor in the West Wing and offered her a “meek apology, which she accepted.” Ivanka’s chief of staff, Julie Raford, corroborated the allegation after she witnessed Kelly making a visit to Ivanka’s office and heard him apologize in what was the first and last time that Ivanka’s staff saw Kelly in their office.
“It is inconceivable that I would EVER shove a woman. Inconceivable. Never happen,” Kelly wrote in an email to The Washington Post in response to Kushner’s claims. “Would never intentionally do something like that. Also, don’t remember ever apologizing to her for something I didn’t do. I’d remember that.”
Kushner’s memoir, which is set to come out in late August, details Kelly’s “insincere” treatment of Ivanka, in which he would neglect to acknowledge her work in private, while paying her compliments and respects to her face.
“Then the four-star general would call her staff to his office and berate and intimidate them over trivial procedural issues that his rigid system often created,” Kushner writes. “He would frequently refer to her initiatives like paid family leave and the child tax credit as ‘Ivanka’s pet projects.’”