Buried down in the details of the Rob Porter story, and in the latest round of excuses about the Rob Porter story, are some mysteries that go beyond that one particular wife-beating SOB. During Tuesday’s intelligence hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray made it clear that the FBI completed its background check on Porter by July, only to have the White House request additional information. On Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pinned the blame for the everything related to Porter on the White House Personnel Security Office.
While Sanders repeatedly described the Personnel Security Office as “staffed by career officials,” the office actually reports to Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin. Hagin, a veteran of both Bush administrations, in turn reports to John Kelly. The office makes the applications for all White House staff, but it expedites the process for senior staff. In fact, the process generally completes within a few weeks, since these positions are given special attention both by the White House and the FBI to keep them moving.
So why, after the FBI turned over what it considered a “final” report on Porter, was the White House asking for information that took more than six additional months to collect? Why did the White House Personnel Security Office impose a ban on handing out more interim security clearances in November? And why, more than a year after being appointed a senior adviser at the White House, is Jared Kushner still operating on an interim clearance?
The Nov. 7 internal email to senior leaders at the Office of Management and Budget said the White House personnel security office had advised that it would no longer grant interim security clearances. Pending requests for interim clearances were expected to be denied, though exceptions could be requested, according to the email.
Someone inside the White House clearly recognized that handing out interim clearance like candy was a bad idea. Was that person Hagin? Was this change coordinated with Kelly or others in the West Wing? And just how many of those “exceptions” were requested? As the House Oversight committee gets down to looking at this, it turns out there’s a lot more here to look at than just Rob Porter.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the Trump administration’s employment of Rob Porter, the former White House staff secretary accused of domestic abuse, committee chairman Trey Gowdy said Wednesday.
Campaign Action
It’s nice that Gowdy is getting interested now, even if it is after Democrats had to ask him to stop acting as a road block to any investigation.
Today, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter urging Chairman Trey Gowdy to finally begin conducting credible oversight of the security clearance process at the White House, not only in light of the many irregularities that have been reported over the past year, but also based on new reports that White House Staff Secretary Robert Porter retained his position even after being denied a permanent security clearance due to domestic violence allegations against him.
But the Porter story—while tawdry, misogynistic and disrespectful of women, national security and common decency—appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s obvious that the White House did not send Rob Porter’s report back to the FBI because it came to them stamped “all clear, good to go.” The FBI clearly surfaced problems with Porter that should have resulted, not just in his failing to achieve clearance, but a suspension of his interim clearance. Instead the White House sent the results back for “more details.”
Add in Kushner and an unknown number of others whose FBI reviews surely landed in the White House months ago, but who are still skating along on interim clearances, and it appears that a big security juggling act is going on. The White House puts in a request, the FBI comes back with problems, the White House insists on more details, the FBI provides them, and the White House insists on still more information. All the while, a Trump staffer maintains access to security that would be denied if the White House Personnel Security Office were actually following standard procedures the way Sanders claims.
And that’s the other big signal that there’s a mass of malfeasance still riding below the waterline of the news. During her press conference, Sanders was adamant that this “isn’t our process” and that the Trump White House was just following the procedures that had always been in place. And that is simply not true.
In a departure from previous administrations, the Trump White House allows staffers with only cursory background checks and interim security clearances to access classified information as if they had permanent authorization.
No federal rule or law prevents employees with an interim clearance from seeing or hearing classified information. But prior administrations of both parties were generally more protective of the nation’s secrets, according to six people familiar with the conduct, including those who worked in the West Wing during the Barack Obama and George W. Bush presidencies.
What the Trump White House is doing is not the same old, same old. They are deliberately opening up secure documents to people who haven’t completed background checks—in complete contradiction of the way it’s been handled by previous administrations. And what the Rob Porter incident has highlighted is the way that the Trump White House is working to keep people running on interim clearance so they never really have to face the results of their background checks.
“That’s the smart thing to do. That’s the standard thing to do,” said Paul Pillar, former deputy chief of the intelligence community’s counterterrorism center who served nearly three decades at the CIA. “What’s going on in the White House now ... just throws the whole idea of security clearances in the trash.”
The Trump White House has created a process in which they: Hand out interim clearance without even a cursory check, ignore FBI results by continuously requesting additional information, never take any step to revoke the interim clearance. This allows them to keep people like Porter—and people like Kushner—cleared to read top secret documents, months after results have come back showing that they represent a danger to the nation. It’s a process in which Sarah Sanders can stand up and say that the process on anyone isn’t final, because the process never is. By design.
The Oversight Committee doesn’t need to just look into Porter, they need to ask how many others who are still operating on interim clearance already have FBI results back that indicate that they shouldn’t have clearance in the first place. And the committee should pull in Joe Hagin to ask him how much of this has made its way to John Kelly … or Donald Trump.
Because in any ordinary White House, this wouldn’t be just another scandal, this would be the scandal. The terminal scandal. What’s hiding down there is at least an iceberg, but it may be Antarctica.