No ‘Porter exception’
The White House explanation for Rob Porter’s continued service despite past allegations of domestic violence changed again yesterday. The misdirection and obfuscation continues a week after Porter quit, and a price needs to be paid for that.
For nearly a week now President Trump’s communications team has spun a misleading narrative about why Porter was still working at the White House with access to classified information despite only holding an interim security clearance. His background check was still ongoing when he resigned, deputy press secretary Raj Shah averred last week.
But FBI Director Christopher Wray said yesterday — under oath — that the agency had turned over its first report on Porter last March. It filed a complete report in July. It provided additional information in November, and the file was closed last month.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders yesterday said the White House Security Office, which received the FBI reports, hadn’t made a final recommendation for “adjudication.”
But the real story here? Given what popped up in Porter’s background, he was likely never going to get a top security clearance. Never. But the White House wanted him on the job — there are reports he was even being considered for a promotion. So everyone played pretend, called the review “ongoing” — and twisted the truth into a pretzel.
Granting new employees an interim clearance is not unusual. But interim standing shouldn’t remain in effect for more than a year for such a sensitive White House post. And a person with interim clearance should not have unfettered access to classified information — something Trump’s own director of national intelligence acknowledged in separate testimony yesterday.
“(I)f you do that, it has to be a specific interim with controlled access and limited access, and that has to be clear right from the beginning,” DNI Dan Coats said.
And if a background check turns up a credible allegation of domestic violence, as Porter’s apparently did? The game changes. Or it ought to, anyway. No staff secretary is indispensable. Porter was vulnerable to blackmail and should not have had access to the nation’s most important secrets.
The Clintons famously operated as if the rules didn’t apply to them. The Trumps have the same attitude.