Former President Donald Trump’s second chief of staff, John Kelly, once shoved Ivanka Trump in a West Wing hallway and then apologized for it, according to her husband, Jared Kushner.
The alleged incident, which Kelly denies, appears in Kushner’s forthcoming Breaking History: A White House Memoir, which hits shelves Aug. 23. Both Ivanka Trump and Kushner, the daughter and son-in-law to the president, were top advisers in the White House in the previous administration.
JARED KUSHNER REVEALS FIGHT WITH THYROID CANCER AND SURGERY TO REMOVE TUMOR FROM THROAT
“One day he had just marched out of a contentious meeting in the Oval Office,” Kushner wrote, according to the Washington Post. “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.”
Roughly an hour later, Kushner added, Kelly visited Ivanka Trump’s second-floor West Wing office to offer “a meek apology, which she accepted.”
Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who served as Trump’s chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, forcefully rejected the description in the book when pressed by the newspaper. “I don’t recall anything like you describe,” he said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“It is inconceivable that I would EVER shove a woman. Inconceivable. Never happen,” Kelly added. “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.”
However, the book notes that Julie Radford, Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, heard Kelly apologize. “It was the first and only time that Ivanka’s staff saw Kelly visit their second-floor corner of the West Wing,” he wrote. Further, Ivanka Trump said through a spokesperson that the description of events as described in her husband’s book was accurate, according to the Washington Post.
