WHY DID IT TAKE 7 MONTHS FOR KEY WHITE HOUSE AIDE TO BE DISMISSED?

… FBI Director, Chris Wray, totally contradicted what was said by the White House. 

 

Top Trump aide resigned in face of multiple accusations to the FBI of spousal abuse.

 

Does it appear to you that whatever virus causes Donald J. Trump to not be able to tell the truth, it must be very contagious?  I say that because now a number of individuals inside the White House have come down with the same symptoms of dishonesty.

 

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked multiple questions after FBI Director Christopher Wray had contradicted the White House’s timeline on when they had been informed of Rob Porter’s security status.  But while her answers might have explained what Wray said, they totally conflicted with what the White House said previously.

 

The White House continues to flail due to Wray’s testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  He had said the FBI had closed its handling of Porter’s background investigation for a security clearance in January.  But Wray said: “What I can tell you is that the FBI submitted a partial report on the investigation in question in March, and then a completed background investigation in late July; that, soon thereafter, we received request for follow-up inquiry, and we did the follow-up and provided that information in November; and that we administratively closed the file in January.”

But the explanations of this from the White House keep changing on an hourly basis.

 

The White House press secretary has suggested that Porter’s security clearance process had been ongoing. In other words, she was saying that the White House Personnel Office may have gotten the FBI response, but she was saying that they, the Personnel Office was questioning whether the FBI investigation had done their job….?  Secretary Sanders said at a follow-up afternoon briefing that the FBI’s process was indeed done, but that it was the White House personnel office that “had not completed their process” and had still been deciding what to recommend about Porter.

 

In other words, the FBI’s process was done, but the overall process was not done because the White House was questioning the FBI’s results…..huh?.  Since when does the White House Personnel Office have the authority to over-rule the FBI’s investigation results?

 

Therefore, the White House independently decided that even though the FBI would not give Porter a go-ahead on a full security clearance due to his spousal abuse of two former wives, he was still allowed to be employed at the highest level in the White House with a temporary security clearance.  This is totally against all the security rules for those that have to handle the most sensitive security information that goes into the president’s daily briefing. 

 

The Washington Post reported last week that dozens of White House employees are still awaiting permanent clearances, including President Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

 

So far, the previous explanations of when the White House and the president’s Chief of Staff had learned about the status of Porter’s security situation have change on an hourly basis.  It is obvious that the White House has basically ignored the decisions as to the status of certain personnel working inside the White House.

 

Ever since the Porter debacle became a major scandal, with this Trump aide resigning in the face of multiple accusations of spousal abuse, the White House has suggested that it was basically being hamstrung by the fact that the security clearance process hadn’t concluded.  But the process had been concluded last July…..?  Porter was allowed to remain in a position where he was seeing everything that went to the president’s desk for 7 months, without having a proper security clearance.

 

Secretary Sanders said: “This is a process that doesn’t operate within the White House.  It’s handled by our law enforcement and intelligence community [FBI]. And we support that process.”  That is obviously a bunch of bull.

 

The Deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah said basically the same thing last week while standing in for Sanders at a briefing.  “I’m not going to get into the specifics of the investigation itself,” Shah said. “I think that’s a question for the FBI and others. But, you know, this is not our process.” Shah added at another point that Porter’s “background investigation was ongoing,” which was incorrect.

 

So, the head of the FBI totally contradicted what was said by both Sanders and Shah. 

 

That background investigation was not ongoing and but they were stating that apparently that process had moved inside the White House, or at least within a section of the White House that deals with security matters.

 

This would seem like a simple issue, but there have been so many untruths coming from the press secretary, the Chief of Staff, and even Porter himself, that it’s hard to see who is at fault, or is it all of them just trying to cover their asses?

 

Sanders started all this when she stated last Monday that “We learned of the extent of the situation involving Rob Porter last Tuesday evening” — Feb. 6.”  Well, what was going on from last July to February 6?

 

It seems that Sanders was leaning pretty hard on the meaning of the word “extent.”   Is she suggesting the White House personnel office didn’t share all its information with senior officials? Or is she saying they questioned the FBI’s results?  Of course, the White House hasn’t elaborated on any of this.

 

What we do know, is that someone inside the White House has been holding lots of negative information on Porter.  They had all the information that the FBI had, and they had it months before Feb. 6.

 

Here are just a few of the questions that this event has spawned.

 

Why did the Chief of Staff, Kelly, lie about when he heard the FBI info on Porter?  Why did Kelly set up a meeting with a select number of reporters to directly hear Porter’s side of the spousal abuse story which Porter insists he was innocent?   Why does press secretary Sanders continue to change her story of when and who was responsible for Porter staying on the job without a security clearance?  Why did the president only feel bad about how this issue would affect Porters future career, and yet not say anything about his concern for the victims of the abuse? 

 

The explanations of this scandal at the White House just seem to get more and more confusing, with all the parties seeming to just be trying to protect their jobs.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018