Donald Trump’s top gatekeeper tried to get him to stop targeting political enemies after three months in office, but the president pushed on, fueled in part by his desire for retribution.
In a stunning revelation by one of Trump’s most trusted aides, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that she had a “loose agreement” with Trump to end his “score settling” within 90 days of his inauguration.
However, the president continued with his agenda, she said, because a “governing principle for him is, ‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.’ And so people that have done bad things need to get out of the government.”
“In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me,” she added.
Wiles’ comments were part of a stunning set of interviews the typically media-shy operative gave over the first year of Trump’s second term to Vanity Fair author Chris Whipple.
In the two-part series, she also described Trump, who is a teetotaler, as having an “alcoholic’s personality”; depicted former “never Trumper” JD Vance as a political opportunist; and took aim at Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files.
Wiles also said Elon Musk was an “avowed” Ketamine user and an “odd duck” and described Trump’s budget chief Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, as a “right wing absolute zealot.”
But shortly after the two-part series was published on Tuesday morning, Wiles went into damage control, describing the article as a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”
Her comments about Trump’s retribution campaign are insightful, given Wiles is both a trusted adviser to the president and a known ally of Bondi, a fellow Floridian now in charge of the justice department.
But Trump and Bondi have had a number of setbacks in recent months, with courts effectively thwarting their bid to go after a number of the president’s enemies.
Last month, for instance, the courts ruled that former beauty pageant queen Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully serving as interim U.S. attorney—dismissing her indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Comey is a longtime adversary of the president, who Trump blames for helping to trigger special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
He pleaded not guilty in October to charges related to claims that he lied to Congress during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020.
James, the New York attorney general who successfully sued Trump for civil fraud, was also indicted by Halligan on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution.
However, she has vehemently denied wrongdoing, labeling the charges as “baseless” and “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.”
In her Vanity Fair article, Wiles said she did not think Trump was “on a retribution tour.”
However, pressed about James, she added: “Well, that might be the one retribution.
“So you haven’t called him [out] on that, or said, ‘Hey, wait a minute?’” Whipple asked.
“No, no, not on her. Not on her. She had a half a billion dollars of his money!” Wiles laughed—a reference to the massive civil fraud penalty won by James’ office against Trump.
On Comey, she said: “I mean, people could think it does look vindictive. I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t think that.
“I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”
White House staffers and Trump Cabinet secretaries rallied around Wiles after the interview, which sent shock waves across Washington.
The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.
Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the…— Susie Wiles (@SusieWiles) December 16, 2025
“President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie,” said Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”
FBI director Kash Patel described the story as “fake news.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wiles commitment to Trump was “beyond reproach.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright declared: “These inflammatory and outright false statements will not be tolerated.”
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