Have you ever faced an integrity test?
For example: someone reaches into their pocket and when they pull out their hand, a $20 bill slips out and lands or the floor. Or someone ahead of you in line at the grocery accidentally forgets their wallet and leaves it on the counter.
Do you immediately alert this person about their potential loss, or do you simply pocket what they’ve carelessly left behind for your own gain? Do you do what’s right, or simply what’s expedient and convenient?
If someone behind you in line sees you pick up the item and just before you stuff it in your pocket they say “HEY!”—do you deserve credit for finally giving it back only after you’ve been caught in the act?
I think not.
We face small and large tests like these all the time. How we respond to them is a testament to our underlying character. How the Trump White House has responded to such challenges over the past year is a clear testament to their complete lack of the same.
For a second let me speak about some of my own personal experiences, particularly in the case of security clearances. During the ‘80s and into the early ‘90s I was granted a TS/SCI security clearance by the FBI and DOD as a requirement for my then-employment with defense contractor Northrop/Grumman.
When I worked at Northrop we all were required to wear ID badges that used a color-code system to display our current security clearance level, and those with only an interim clearance were quite visible. If your job required handling classified material but you hadn’t yet reached a complete status on your clearance, you were temporarily given unclassified clerical work to do until your status was completed and the FBI had finished their background check.
We actually had a staff of cleared personnel whose only job was to act as an escort—a minder—for non-cleared persons in the building. We had various people such as construction workers or plumbers on site at any particular time, and an escort’s job was essentially to be there and monitor someone else as they worked, ensure that they remained in an unclassified area, and that no classified material or even discussions of classified material took place within earshot of an uncleared person.
That rule also applied to persons with only an interim clearance.
During my time at this job I was interviewed and briefed by the FBI several times on the dangers of potential foreign influence, since as a person with a clearance we could potentially be targets for foreign intelligence services attempting to gain access to the materials we worked with.
There were several people in my division who never did gain a full clearance and had to be limited to working entirely with unclassified systems. One of those persons didn’t receive a full clearance not due to any fault of their own, but simply because both of their parents still lived in mainland China. The ability of a foreign nation to apply pressure, potentially threatening their parents, was apparently too great a risk in the estimation of the FBI for them to approve a clearance.
Those concerns were not unfounded because America has been spied on by China, as documented by The New Yorker.
In the magazine earlier this month, I wrote about Greg Chung, a Chinese-American engineer at Boeing who worked on nasa’s space-shuttle program. In 2009, Chung became the first American to be convicted in a jury trial on charges of economic espionage, for passing unclassified technical documents to China.
While reporting the story, I learned a great deal about an earlier investigation involving another Chinese-American engineer, named Chi Mak, who led F.B.I. agents to Greg Chung. The Mak case, which began in 2004, was among the F.B.I.’s biggest counterintelligence investigations, involving intense surveillance that went on for more than a year.
While Chung volunteered his services to China out of what seemed to be love for his motherland, the F.B.I. believed that Mak was a trained operative who had been planted in the U.S. by Chinese intelligence. Beginning in 1988, Mak had worked at Power Paragon, a defense company in Anaheim, California, that developed power systems for the U.S. Navy. The F.B.I. suspected that Mak, who immigrated to the U.S. from Hong Kong in the late nineteen-seventies, had been passing sensitive military technology to China for years.
In the current context, this type of influence by China seems to have set its sights on Jared Kushner.
Via the New Yorker.
In March, 2017, Bill Priestap, the F.B.I.’s chief of counterintelligence, visited the White House and briefed Kushner about the danger of foreign-influence operations, according to three officials familiar with the meeting. Priestap told Kushner that he was among the top intelligence targets worldwide, and was being targeted not only by China but by every other major intelligence service as well, including those of the Russians and the Israelis. Priestap said that foreign spy agencies could use diplomats and spies masquerading as students and journalists to collect information about him. (An F.B.I. spokesperson declined to comment.)
Priestap and Kushner discussed some of Kushner’s contacts, including Wendi Deng Murdoch, the ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch. Kushner and Ivanka Trump had known her for about a decade, and she was a regular guest at their Washington home. U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have long speculated about Wendi Murdoch’s ties to the Chinese government. Internally, some Chinese officials spoke about her in ways that suggested they had influence over her, the former senior official, who was briefed on the intelligence, said. Other officials said that the intelligence was inconclusive.
On top of these, Kushner has an outstanding $1.2 billion loan on his property at 666 Park Avenue which presents a significant security risk, and just before the election borrowed $285 million from Deutsche Bank (who were fined $630 million for $10 billion in Russian money-laundering last year), and yet even they have referred some of Kushner’s transactions they deemed "suspicious” to Germany's Federal Financial Advisory Authority as well as the Mueller investigation. With only an interim security clearance, Kushner gets to read the President’s Daily Security Brief, even though Trump doesn’t read it himself. Jared and Ivanka both have secret private email accounts on Trump company servers. (And people didn't trust Clinton—who did have a valid permanent clearance but didn't have access to the PDB—because she did what with her emails again and her husband Bill took a measly $500,000 from where?)
So there’s all that.
At Northrop we also had an employee who had managed to run up quite a debt from multiple visits to the Caribbean. This person eventually decided that he was going to solve his debt problem by smuggling classified documents out of our facility and sell them to Russia. He phoned the Russian embassy in San Francisco and offered up the documents, only to have the Russians hang up on him. They knew quite well that the FBI was likely listening in, and they were (just as they were listening to Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn talking to Ambassador Kislyak). Soon afterward the FBI called him back pretending to be the Russians, and arranged a meeting. When this person appeared at the meeting with the two documents he’d smuggled out of our classified facility, he was arrested on the spot and is still serving two life sentences for this action.
A former Northrop Corp. aerospace engineer who tried to sell secret defense plans to two undercover FBI agents posing as Soviet spies pleaded guilty to espionage charges Thursday in Los Angeles federal court.
Thomas Patrick Cavanagh, speaking so softly that he had to be told to repeat his comments, admitted that he believed he was selling classified documents about the U.S. "stealth" bomber program to agents of the Soviet Union.
Questioned in detail by U.S. District Judge Matthew Byrne Jr. before his guilty plea was accepted, Cavanagh said he knew the information he tried to sell would be helpful to the Soviet Union.
However, the 40-year-old Downey resident, who once told the undercover FBI agents that he was after "big money" as a spy, said he never intended to harm this country by his actions.
This guy committed espionage because he owed a few thousand dollars on his Visa card, but we’re supposed to trust Kushner when he owes Deutsche bank about $285 million and even they think his transactions are shady?
When the FBI grants someone a security clearance they’re making an estimation on whether they believe you are the type of person who is likely to repeatedly pass an integrity test. They are assessing that you are not going to betray your promise to America—not for convenience, for love of some other country, for your family, to avoid embarrassment, or for money.
We now know due to this week’s testimony of FBI director Christopher Wray that the FBI did not have confidence in the integrity of former White House staff secretary Rob Porter because that’s what they reported to the White House in a preliminary report in March, then a complete report in July, and even with a follow-up report in November. And yet during that entire time, Rob Porter was handling material that was deemed highly classified—possibly even more so than the material that myself and other cleared Northrop Grumman personnel (including Cavanagh) had been handling for years.
When finally confronted with the photograph of Porter’s ex-wife with a black eye, Porter himself decided to resign, but the rest of the White House staff tried to talk him out of it and asked him to “stay and fight.” They continued to defend and rationalize his continued employment and his continued access to classified material, even after the FBI had long recommended the denial of his clearance over the previous 11 months.
Both of Porter’s wives had told the FBI about Porter’s abuse. They have provided them pictures and also copies of a restraining order after Porter had smashed a window at the home of his second ex-wife. In November when there were apparently over 100 White House staffers with only interim clearances including Ivanka Trump, the White House personnel security office recommended that no new hires with just interim clearances should be retained, but that previous hires—such as Rob Porter and Jared Kushner—were exempt.
The White House quietly imposed a ban on new interim security clearances for anyone in the executive office of the president last fall, but it let existing employees with interim clearances stay on, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.
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.
Staffers who had already been granted interim security clearances — like former staff secretary Rob Porter, who resigned last week amid allegations of domestic abuse — could continue to hold them while their background investigations were finished, the email said.
The apparent reason that Porter and the 30 to 40 other persons in the White House who still only have interim clearances have apparently been allowed to stay? Jared Kushner.
One week after the 2016 election, President-elect Donald J. Trump tweeted that he was “not trying to get ‘top level security clearance’ for my children,” calling such claims “a typically false news story.” But he said nothing at the time about his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Nearly 15 months later, Mr. Kushner, now a senior White House adviser with a broad foreign policy portfolio that requires access to some of the intelligence community’s most closely guarded secrets, still has not succeeded in securing a permanent security clearance. The delay has left him operating on an interim status that allows him access to classified material while the F.B.I. continues working on his full background investigation.
Mr. Kushner’s status was similar to the status of others in the White House, including Rob Porter, the staff secretary who resigned last week after his two former wives alleged that he physically and emotionally abused them during their marriages.
People familiar with the security clearance process in Mr. Trump’s White House said it was widely acknowledged among senior aides that raising questions about unresolved vetting issues in a staff member’s background would implicitly reflect on Mr. Kushner’s status, as well — a situation made more awkward because Mr. Kushner is married to the president’s daughter Ivanka. (emphasis added)
What the White House did here was a clearly fail when faced with an integrity test.
Did they do the right thing and pull everyone with a pending interim clearance from any access to classified materials—or did they stuff that dropped wallet in their back pocket?
During that same month of November, White House counsel Don McGahn encouraged Porter to resign after he’d learned about Porter’s security clearance being delayed in September and being contacted directly by Porter’s latest ex-girlfriend about his abuse.
And yet, Porter remained.
Just as Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had come to the White House a year ago to warn them about Michael Flynn being potentially compromised, they did nothing until the issue hit the papers, until someone finally said “HEY!!” Despite all the warnings, Porter remained and Flynn remained. Kushner has remained and even David Sorensen, who had also had allegations of domestic violence, remained.
In response to all this Trump whined via tweet that Porter’s life was “ruined by a single allegation without Due Process.” However, Sorensen’s ex-wife Jessica Corbett responded to Trump’s tweet: “He got due process when I answered the FBI agents truthfully.” She said the FBI’s first question to her was, “Why did you and David get a divorce?” “Because he was abusive,” Corbett said. “And I escaped and survived.”
After Kelly initially defended Porter, he then sheepishly condemned domestic violence—but behind the scenes other White House personnel state that he was actually trying to concoct a plausible story for his lack of action, and making them stick to it.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is being accused by some of his fellow White House officials of asking them to give an account about the Rob Porter scandal that they says is not accurate.
Two senior White House officials tell the Washington Post that Kelly told members present at a staff meeting Friday to tell reporters that “he took action to remove Porter within 40 minutes of learning that abuse allegations from two ex-wives were credible.”
One official tells the Post that many people at the meeting could not believe he was telling them to put out what they believed was a false story about his actions after the Porter scandal first broke.
In fact, right until the point that Porter resigned, he was in line to be promoted to deputy chief of staff and become Kelly’s right hand.
Rob Porter was involved in serious discussions to be promoted when he abruptly resigned from the White House last week amid allegations that he abused his two ex-wives, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.
His anticipated elevation further highlights how top White House officials were willing to overlook indications from the FBI that there were potential abuse allegations in his background in exchange for professional competence in a tumultuous West Wing.
Porter had been actively lobbying to take on new policy portfolios outside the traditional scope of the staff secretary, one person familiar with the matter said, which included speechwriting duties and a role in planning policy rollouts. Neither of those tasks is traditionally carried out by the staff secretary.
So what exactly does that tell us about Kelly’s judgement, good sense, and integrity? Or for that matter, Trump’s?
Porter is still allegedly dating White House communications director Hope Hicks. She had previously been dating Corey Lewandowski, who ultimately left his position as Trump’s campaign manager after he assaulted a female reporter. When it happened, of course Trump denied it. He called her liar and defended Lewandowski, just as he defended Roger Ailes, and Bill O’Reilly, and Roy Moore when they were all accused of sexual misconduct. Just as he denied sexual assault allegations against himself.
Frankly if the FBI had done a background check on Trump, he probably wouldn’t pass it. Not after his attorney Michael Cohen has admitted to paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money.
Oh and lest we forget, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, who had for a time been granted access to the principal group inside the National Security Council, also has had allegations of spousal abuse and domestic violence lodged against him.
Stephen Bannon, the head of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, faced domestic violence charges after a fight with a woman he was married to 20 years ago, in which she accused him of grabbing her by the neck “violently” and destroying a telephone when she tried to summon police.
Documents from the Santa Monica, California, police department relating to the case were first published by Politico on Thursday, 25 August 2016. The case was eventually dismissed.
“She complained of soreness to her neck,” wrote a police officer who responded to the incident. “I saw red marks on her left wrist and the right side of her neck. These were photographed.”
..
Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery and dissuading a witness. The case was dismissed. The woman claims in the divorce filing that it was dismissed because Bannon convinced her to leave town, because “if I wasn’t in town they couldn’t serve me and I wouldn’t have to go to court”.
“He also told me that if I went to court he and his attorney would make sure that I would be the one who was guilty. I was told that I could go anywhere in the world.”
One wonders what Bannon’s FBI background file looked like and whether he received a permanent clearance before he was granted access to the NSC.
But the defining moment for Mr. Bannon came Saturday night in the form of an executive order giving the rumpled right-wing agitator a full seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council — while downgrading the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence, who will now attend only when the council is considering issues in their direct areas of responsibilities. It is a startling elevation of a political adviser, to a status alongside the secretaries of state and defense, and over the president’s top military and intelligence advisers.
In theory, the move put Mr. Bannon, a former Navy surface warfare officer, admiral’s aide, investment banker, Hollywood producer and Breitbart News firebrand, on the same level as his friend, Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, a former Pentagon intelligence chief who was Mr. Trump’s top adviser on national security issues before a series of missteps reduced his influence.
This week White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was grilled over a slow turning spit about the White House Wife Beaters Club. She continued to say that Kelly didn’t know about the abuse allegations until the day after the black eye picture was published and claimed that things were stalled at the personnel security office, even though they weren’t since they recommended people with interim clearances be blocked and McGahn asked Porter to resign back in November. She also says that the new Trump budget from yesterday fully funds the Violence Against Women Act, which is funny because the previous one from last year cut that funding by 93 percent.
A chart buried on page 245 of President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget analysis looks alarming: It shows a massive decrease in funding over 10 years for federal programs that aid survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.
The 93 percent cut appeared to confirm the worst fears of survivor advocates and women’s activists. They’d been hearing reports that the Trump administration might slash federal funding for counseling services, shelter, legal help and other programs under the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act.
…
After the budget came out this week, the Trump administration rushed to reassure advocates. It advised them to ignore the chart that shows funding for the programs holding steady in 2018, then plummeting from $460 million to eventually $30 million annually within a decade. They said the White House had no plans to gut the Violence Against Women grant programs.
Most of this year’s budget for the programs comes from the federal Crime Victims Fund. In future years, though, the budgets do not assume that money will be transferred from the fund. The administration has yet to determine how it will pay for the programs after this year. (emphasis added)
Journalist April Ryan asked her about this, but Sanders ducked the question. And when Ryan said director of Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney didn’t mention it when the budget was rolled out, Huckabee-Sanders said, "It's because you probably didn’t ask those questions. Next?” Really?
The point here is that while he’s defended Lewandowski, O’Reilly, Ailes, Moore, Porter, Sorensen, and even Flynn, the one thing that Trump hasn’t done is talk about the abuse victims.
That is until Wednesday, when he finally said domestic violence is “bad, m’kay?” This was only nine days after Porter resigned.
“ I’m totally opposed to domestic violence and everyone knows it. It almost wouldn’t have to be said.” Oh, but it does, it does! particularly since Trump’s own first wife Ivana and two other women have previously accused him of rape.
And still not a word of condolence, empathy, or even recognition of the victims. Not one.
Conservative commentator S.E. Cupp said this week that “Every single woman in this White House should stay home until someone with some independent authority can promise them they are safe at work.”
Unfortunately there is no person in the White House with that authority. Not really. The personnel office recommended blocking anyone with just an interim clearance months ago—and yet they remained. Don McGahn asked Porter to resign that month, and yet he remained. Kushner is being investigated by his own bank—and yet he remains.
Nobody is minding this candy store.
We have a White House that is literally full of wife beaters and potential foreign assets, people that could easily be compromised and blackmailed, who are high-value targets for foreign intelligence services from China, Israel, Germany, and even Russia.
And does the White House do the right thing?
Nope, not until someone else forces them to. Not until someone else, usually in the media, speaks up and says “HEY!”
And then they sheepishly put the wallet back on the counter.
And nobody, but nobody, in this White House talks about what has happened to all the wives and girlfriends during this entire process. Not a one.
Sunday, Feb 18, 2018 · 8:31:10 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
John Kelly has finally placed two fallen wallets back on the counter:
After the departures of both Porter and Sorensen he wrote an email to the White House Staff condemning Domestic Violence, because they apparently had to be told that was a bad thing.
Chief of staff John Kelly emailed White House staffers on Thursday to condemn domestic violence amid scrutiny this week over the White House's handling of domestic abuse allegations involving a top aide.
In an email obtained by CNN, Kelly called the allegations leveled against former White House staff secretary Rob Porter "shocking and troubling." Porter resigned on Wednesday after two ex-wives detailed years of alleged physical and emotional abuse.
He’s also revised the policy for the 30-40 White House Staffers who still only have Interim Clearances.
Saying that recent events had exposed some “shortcomings,” Kelly decreed that any interim security clearances for staffers whose background investigations have been pending since June 1 or before will be discontinued in a week.
This apparently includes Kushner — which begs the question — how-oh-how will he ever implement world peace and the rapture now?
Sunday, Feb 18, 2018 · 9:03:02 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
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