Trump speechwriter fired amid scrutiny of appearance with white nationalists

WASHINGTON — A White House speechwriter for President Donald Trump was terminated last week after revelations that he had spoken at a conference attended by well-known white nationalists, according to three people familiar with the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Darren Beattie, who was a visiting instructor at Duke University before he joined the White House speechwriting team, was fired Friday after a media inquiry about his appearance at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club conference, where Beattie spoke on a panel alongside Peter Brimelow.

Brimelow, founder of the antiimmigrant website Vdare.com, is a “white nationalist” and “regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremists.

CNN’s KFile, an investigative unit, published a report on Sunday on Beattie and his appearance at the Mencken event, which has been attended in the past by white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Once White House officials were informed about CNN’s pending report, Beattie reportedly was confronted and urged to step down immediately. But he apparently refused to resign, arguing that he was not racist and that he had made uncontroversial academic points at the Mencken gathering.

When it became clear that Beattie would not resign, the people familiar with the matter said, the White House terminated him.