Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly secretly listened in on all of President Donald Trump’s phone calls, the ex-POTUS’ son-in-law Jared Kushner has revealed in a new book, extracts of which were seen by the New York Post.
In the book titled ‘Breaking History’, which is due to be released later this month, Kushner in particular argued that Trump was not in the know about his chief of staff’s reported eavesdropping until Kelly's replacement, Mick Mulvaney, notified him before the December 28, 2018, dinner at former Vice President Mike Pence's home.
“Before we departed, Mulvaney and I met with the president to discuss his upcoming schedule. Then Mulvaney handed Trump a document to sign. ‘This will end the practice Kelly started of listening to all of your phone calls’, Mulvaney said,” according to Kushner.
Trump was purportedly infuriated about the fact that Kelly, who officially left his post on January 2, 2019, “had given himself the ability to listen surreptitiously” to all of the 45th president’s phone calls.
“‘Kelly did what?’ the president asked, stunned at the invasion of privacy. ‘End that immediately’,” Kushner wrote.
According to Kushner, the revelation worried Trump so much that after Kelly’s departure, he issued an order to prevent any other senior White House staff from eavesdropping.
Upon seeing extracts of the book, the NYP cited an unnamed source familiar with Kushner’s assertions who backed up his account.
The source argued that Kelly’s eavesdropping “was possible and was happening” and that it was “wholly inappropriate for the chief — or anyone — to listen in on [Trump’s] calls without telling the president”.
Another source, however, told the NYP that they thought it was “crazy” that Trump would ever have believed that nobody in the West Wing was listening when he took landline calls.