John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff during the Trump administration, revealed last year that his former boss was guilty of an impeachable offense.
Kelly said that Trump was willing to ignore legal limits to his own power - as well as those within his administration - in order to try and dig up dirt on political opponents. There were a number of political opponents on Trump's hit list:
"...in addition to Comey and McCabe, Trump wanted the IRS and the Justice Department to target former CIA Director John O. Brennan, Hillary Clinton, Jeff Bezos, and FBI officials including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page."
Trump specifically wanted high level investigations which exceeded his own authority, as well as that of Kelly. Kelly advised the president not to pursue it, and attempted to explain the legal issues involved. In fact Kelly was trying to protect the president from himself. But Trump was not getting the message:
The Times’ new report went on to note, “Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted.” The then-president “regularly” made the demands anyway, seeking investigations against his perceived foes, leading Kelly to remind his boss what he wanted “was not just potentially illegal and immoral but also could blow back on him.”
Still, Trump kept on with his apparently illegal requests:
While in office, President Donald J. Trump repeatedly told John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Kelly said. Mr. Kelly ... said in response to questions from The New York Times that Mr. Trump’s demands were part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been critical of him.
For a while, Kelly had remained quiet, not voicing any kind of dissent or criticism of Trump during the early days of his time in the Trump White House. But if anything, his boss's behavior grew ever more outrageous as time went on, Kelly finally began to grow more vocal and critical of his boss as he began "accusing Trump of, among other things, “poisoning“ people’s minds. Kelly ultimately added that Trump has “serious character issues“ and is not “a real man.”
It really is astonishing to think of the level of entitlement and a just total absence of any sense of limits that Trump has consistently exhibited. Again, he never seems to shy away from proving, time and time again, just how unfit he is to hold high political office.
John Kelly: Trump wanted IRS to target perceived political foes by Steve Benen, Nov. 14, 2022:
A former White House chief of staff just accused — on the record — a former American president of an impeachable offense. Nov. 14, 2022, 9:45 AM EST By Steve Benen
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/john-kelly-trump-wanted-irs-target-perceived-political-foes-rcna57033
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