Kelly Rejected FBI Job Over Trump’s Loyalty Demand

Axios reports:

The day after President Trump fired FBI boss James Comey, the president phoned John Kelly, who was then secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and offered him Comey’s job, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Schmidt reports in his forthcoming book, “Donald Trump v. The United States.”

Driving the news: “But the president added something else — if he became FBI director, Trump told him, 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,” Schmidt writes. “Kelly said that he would be loyal to the Constitution and the rule of law, but he refused to pledge his loyalty to Trump.”