A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America

by Philip Rucker

One day, Trump gave what Kelly considered an order: “I want you to give it to them.” Kelly refused, saying it was improper and politically stupid. He was mindful of the career people who considered the granting of clearances a religion and who would have reason to rat out an abuse. “No, I won’t,” Kelly said. “It’s not ethical. This will come back and bite us.” Still, Kelly gave Trump some advice about how he could get what he wanted. As president, he was the final authority on access to classified material. He could legally decide on his own to grant Kushner a permanent clearance. The conversation went back and forth as Trump tried to get Kelly to do it instead, and the chief of staff held firm. In the end, Trump did what he promised the media he would not do: he bypassed the typical process to grant Kushner permission to see the country’s most carefully guarded secrets. Kelly wrote a memo to his file, in shades of Comey’s own moves to document his interactions with Trump. The chief of staff then alerted the White House security office, which granted Kushner the privilege he had been denied for months.