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Another Donald Trump confidante has been shown the door. This time it is Trump’s “body man,” John McEntee. The former Fox News production assistant had been with Trump since 2015. From the Wall Street Journal:
President Donald Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, was escorted out of the White House on Monday, two senior administration officials said. The cause of the firing was an unspecified security issue, said a third White House official with knowledge of the situation.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders declined to comment saying, “We don’t comment on personnel issues.” Mr. McEntee didn’t return a call seeking comment.
McEntee’s removal was so abrupt, he was escorted out of the White House and was not even given an opportunity to get his jacket or any of his belongings. What was in McEntee’s background that warranted such immediate removal? The White House won’t say, but whatever security clearance obstacle McEntee had was severe enough to escort him out of the building by security, but not enough to keep him off Trump’s campaign staff, which announced this morning that McEntee will be a senior campaign advisor.
Politico profiled McEntee in December 2017, describing McEntee as extremely loyal to Trump:
He’s a teetotaling former altar boy, and he can talk confidently about sports with a boss who, it’s fair to say, has a few opinions on the subject. Outside of Hicks and Scavino, McEntee is one of the only White House employees whose contact with the president spans his political and personal lives. But he has a conspicuously low profile—McEntee’s a “lock box,” in the words of his father and one White House aide, who won’t even dish to his own family. “He literally loves the president. Not even to me, he would never say anything negative, not in a million years,” his father, John, says. “He loves the president and that family. Jared and Ivanka, too.”
He’s also known in the White House as a practical joker. Politico noted his not-so-funny habit of forging Donald Trump’s signature:
For months, he has played a practical joke on unwitting staffers by handing them a note, “signed” by Trump, whose signature McEntee has perfected. The note usually gives the staffer a hard time about something, or an “atta-boy” for all of the work they are doing. Only later does McEntee reveal that he wrote it, as other staffers usually start laughing. Many hang on to the notes as keepsakes. “For context, it’s about having fun,” one former White House staffer hastened to explain. “Not trying to undermine the U.S. government.”
Forging the president’s signature—isn’t that hilarious?
But, back to the Wall Street Journal’s report on McEntee’s abrupt firing. Buried in the final paragraph of that report is this extremely alarming detail:
His review turned up “a couple spreadsheets worth of people” at the White House operating with interim security clearance after the first nine months of the Trump administration. He also found at least 35 officials who were inappropriately given top secret clearance.
Thirty-five people were inappropriately given top secret clearance. Donald Trump and his incompetent administration gave top secret security clearance to nearly three dozen people who never should have had access to our nation’s most guarded secrets. Absolutely outrageous. Gross incompetence. Dereliction of duty.