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White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, an “impolite arrogant woman” in a 2017 email after they spoke on the phone about President Donald Trump’s travel ban executive order.
According to BuzzFeed News, which obtained the emails via a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, Kelly wrote an email on Feb. 8, 2017, describing his conversation with Warren.
The email was written to Kevin Carroll, who served as Kelly’s senior counselor at the Department of Homeland Security, where Kelly was serving as secretary at the time.
Below is Kelly’s email to Carroll:
“Absolutely most insulting conversation I have ever had with anyone. What an impolite arrogant woman. She immediately began insulting our people accusing them of not following the court order, insulting and abusive behavior towards those covered by the pause, blah blah blah.”
Kelly was referring to Trump’s early ban, which temporarily prohibited travel from seven Muslim-majority countries to the U.S.
The order was blocked several times in early 2017 by federal judges, but it was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court.
BuzzFeed News reported:
Warren called Trump’s travel ban illegal during a protest she attended soon after Trump issued the executive order at Logan International Airport in Boston, where a number of people were detained. A congressional source familiar with Warren’s phone call with Kelly told BuzzFeed News that the senator’s staff had tried to obtain information from the Department of Homeland Security about her constituents, some of whom held visas, who were detained at Logan beginning on Jan. 29, 2017. But the staffers were unsuccessful. Warren then reached out to Kelly, who didn’t respond to her for a week. When Kelly finally called Warren, she told him she had been trying to reach him, which Kelly denied. Warren described her staff’s numerous email exchanges with Kelly and their conversation then became heated.
In response to Kelly’s email, Carroll joked that Warren was overplaying her hand at running for president in 2020 to challenge Trump.
“Too bad Senate Majority Leader McConnell couldn’t order her to be quiet again!” Carroll replied to Kelly. “Warren is running for president so early, trying too hard, and chasing bad pitches.”
In June, the Supreme Court issued a major 5-4 ruling that the president’s travel ban was legal. The opinion states that Trump’s immigration restrictions fell “squarely” within the president’s authority.
The court rejected claims that the ban was motivated by religious discrimination and held that the president had the legal right to protect the nation from potential national security issues.
“The [order] is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices,” Chief Justice Johns Roberts wrote in the opinion. “The text says nothing about religion.”
The Supreme Court made it clear the president of the United States can legally restrict immigration for national security purposes.
The revelation of Kelly’s email comes as Warren is admittedly considering a run for president in 2020, and she would be challenging Trump if she secures the Democratic Party’s nomination.
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