WASHINGTON — White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said the administration’s accusations against New York Attorney General Letitia James “might” be “retribution,” and “when there’s an opportunity” for President Donald Trump to take retribution, “he will go for it,” Vanity Fair reported in a new profile of Wiles.
Vanity Fair published the two-part profile on Tuesday based on a wide-ranging series of 11 interviews over the course of a year with Wiles, who rarely grants public interviews and generally stays out of the spotlight. The profile provides a rare look into the mindset of one of the most powerful people in the White House.
Reached for comment on Wiles’ remarks, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wiles “has helped President Trump achieve the most successful first 11 months in office of any President in American history.”
“President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie,” Leavitt said in the statement. “The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”
Wiles also rebuked Vanity Fair’s reporting in a post to X, calling it “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 story,” she said. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
Reached for comment, the Justice Department pointed to Wiles’ post and the White House’s response.
In a March interview with the publication, published as part of Tuesday’s profile, the reporter asked Wiles whether she has ever told Trump “this is not supposed to be a retribution tour,” referring to the administration’s early actions against those whom the president has viewed as his enemies.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over.”
Asked in August about the end of a “retribution tour” after 90 days, Wiles told the publication: “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour. 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.”
The Trump administration tried to bring charges against James and former FBI Director James Comey, both Trump critics who had mounted investigations centered around the president, with Comey initially looking into potential links between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia and James securing a more than half-billion-dollar civil fraud judgment against Trump and his family business that was overturned on appeal last summer.
But last month, a federal judge dismissed the indictments against James, who was charged with mortgage fraud, and Comey, who was indicted on charges related to congressional testimony he gave in 2020, after the judge found the prosecutor who pursued both cases had been unlawfully appointed.
The Justice Department then failed successive attempts to secure an indictment against James after the original case was dismissed, although prosecutors could try to indict James again. NBC News reported earlier this month that a source familiar with the matter said there “should be no premature celebrations” related to the case. The department doesn’t comment on grand jury matters.
Before those charges were brought, Trump publicly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi in a Truth Social post to prosecute Comey, James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., calling them “all guilty as hell,” in what was reportedly meant to be a private message, and his critics have repeatedly criticized him for targeting those he sees as political foes.
Asked by Vanity Fair about the administration’s accusation of mortgage fraud against James, Wiles reportedly said, “Well, that might be the one retribution.”
Pressed by the publication on whether she challenged Trump on the allegations against James, Wiles said, “No, no, not on her.”
“Not on her. She had a half a billion dollars of his money!” she said, laughing, Vanity Fair reported.
When asked, Wiles said of the Comey prosecution: “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,” she continued. “But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”
