A house of ill repute

There are dozens of people working in the White House who, like Porter, have not yet received clearance. Starting with the son-in-law that has been remapping the world while under active counterintelligence investigation for shaping policy in a way that may stave off familial bankruptcy.

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FBI already told the White House that Porter and others would not get security clearance. And there are witnesses that Kelly knew about these multiple White House aides and thought they should be fired.

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Remember: according to Supreme Court precedent, the President has final authority on matters of clearance. So if Trump wants to override the FBI’s determination, he can. Which he might get away with so long as it remained secret, so long as the press didn’t know that a bunch of people were working with the country’s most sensitive information even though the FBI had told the White House it was a very bad idea to let them. And know which ones they were.

But whether through the coincidental timing of a bunch of women refusing to let a serial abuser go on with his life or through orchestration by the Bureau or both, any effort to keep secret that the White House was delaying the obvious counterintelligence choice or even perhaps planning to defy the FBI about it is in the process of being exposed.

  Emptywheel

I suspect the FBI is going to make Trump sorry he ever took them on.

Trump is reportedly consulting now with two of the most likely counterintelligence problems, Jared and (on her own right, because of her own dodgy business deals) Ivanka, on a staff shake-up to try to make this problem go away.

White House chief of staff John Kelly was told several weeks ago that the FBI would recommend denying full security clearances to multiple White House aides who had been working in the West Wing on interim security clearances.

Those aides, according to a senior administration official, included former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who left the White House on Thursday after reports that he physically and verbally abused his two ex-wives.

The White House chief-of-staff told confidants in recent weeks that he had decided to fire anyone who had been denied a clearance — but had yet to act on that plan before the Porter allegations were first reported this week.

  Politico

Just hadn't gotten around to it. But he was going to.

Kelly initially defended Porter, who has been romantically involved with White House communications director Hope Hicks, before expressing shock over the allegations on Thursday.

Shocked. You want to know how shocked Kelly is about abusive men?

Kelly went on the record with the Daily Mail on Tuesday night defending Porter, praising him as a “man of true integrity and honor.”

That, too.

Kelly had been aware for several weeks that Porter would never receive a full security clearance due to a protective order that had been filed against him by an ex-wife in 2010. It’s unclear whether he was aware of what both of Porter’s ex-wives, Colbie Holderness and Jennifer Willoughby, say they told FBI agents during the course of their interviews for his clearance about the abuse they suffered at his hands.

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The initial Daily Mail report was worse than the White House had anticipated, containing photographs of the 2010 protective order filed against Porter but also a lengthy, on-the-record interview with one of his ex-wives as well as on-the-record confirmation from the other that he had abused her during their marriage.

But it wasn’t until Wednesday morning, when The Intercept first published a photograph of Porter’s first wife with a black eye, that Kelly and the White House communications team knew it would have to walk back its statement, the two White House officials said.

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As staff secretary, Porter handled every piece of paper that went to and from the president. Last month, he paired up with policy adviser and longtime aide Stephen Miller to develop Trump’s State of the Union speech.

I'm sure he'll be missed.

Trump jokingly told economic adviser Gary Cohn several months ago that while he initially thought Porter was “just some guy who handed me papers,” he had since realized that Porter was “the smartest guy in the White House.”

Smart enough to get away with spousal abuse, a subject dear to what would be Trump's heart if he had one.

“The concept of interim clearances was created for somebody in a position of importance to be able to come on board and start working right away while the investigation ran its course,” said Bradley Moss, an attorney who specializes in security clearance law. “I’ve never heard of somebody just being allowed to sit on an interim clearance indefinitely. It runs contrary to the entire concept of the clearance process.”

This administration is a whole new ballgame.

However, Moss added, the president himself holds the ultimate authority over the clearance process, which he can alter by executive order – though it would be unprecedented. “If he wants individuals like Jared Kushner and Rob Porter to just sit with interim clearances for three years, he can do that,” Moss said.

We have a lot of rules and regulations and traditions that need to be looked at, changed or codified. We have Trump to thank for drawing our attention to these things.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.