White House Regrets Its Handling of Rob Porter Case: ‘We All Could Have Done Better’
February 9, 2018 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Comments Off
“I think it’s fair to say we all could have done better over the few hours or last few days in dealing with this situation,” Mr. Shah said.
Mr. Porter was seen as a crucial ally in bringing order and discipline to a White House full of political and policy novices, and as an even-tempered check on the volatile tendencies of the president and some of his other aides. The office of the staff secretary puts together the president’s briefing book every day, as well as memorandums for scheduled meetings.
During the Obama administration, the president would also receive a set of briefing and decisional memos most nights.
“This required our team to review highly classified material for the president on a daily basis,” said Joani Walsh, who served as President Barack Obama’s staff secretary. Like others in the office, Ms. Walsh had a clearance that allowed her to see top-secret and sensitive compartmentalized information, usually called “T.S./S.C.I. clearance.” Officials who hold the post also typically have code-word clearance to handle the country’s most closely guarded secrets.
The White House did not address on Thursday how Mr. Porter could have served in that role given that the top security clearance his job requires had been held up because the F.B.I. had learned of the allegations by his former wives.
Jennifer Willoughby, his second wife, said in an interview that in September, Mr. Porter had told her that White House officials had informed him that his security clearance “had not gone through.” She said he told her that “someone had told him that there was a violent allegation and that was what was holding it up.”
John Kelly: From Order to Disorder?
John F. Kelly was brought in to restore order to a chaotic West Wing. But recently the White House chief of staff has been finding himself at the center of controversy.
By CHRIS CIRILLO and SARAH STEIN KERR on Publish Date February 8, 2018.
Photo by Eric Thayer for The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
Both Ms. Willoughby and Colbie Holderness, Mr. Porter’s first wife, said on Thursday that they had first been interviewed by F.B.I. officials last January, soon after Mr. Porter joined the Trump administration.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Ms. Holderness said Mr. Porter tried to work through an intermediary to discourage her from divulging his violent behavior. She said he had dispatched a mutual acquaintance last January to approach her husband, Skiffington Holderness.
According to an email Mr. Holderness sent to the F.B.I., Mr. Porter’s friend had told him that it was “good” that Ms. Holderness was not initially thinking about speaking with the F.B.I.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
“Rob isn’t lying; that women around town lie because they are ‘crazy’ and jealous,” Mr. Holderness said the man told him, according to the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.
After their initial interviews with officials last January, both Ms. Willoughby and Ms. Holderness said that they did not hear from the F.B.I. agent who had handled their case again until September.
At that point, the agent emailed Ms. Willoughby for permission to gain access to a restraining order she had filed against Mr. Porter in 2010, writing, “in furtherance of the background investigation.” At Thursday’s news briefing, Mr. Shah said the investigation had continued since January 2017 until this week, when Mr. Porter left the White House.
The photographs that Mr. Shah said had “saddened” Mr. Trump and ultimately led White House officials to back away from Mr. Porter were in the F.B.I.’s possession over a year ago. In an email dated Jan. 27, 2017, Ms. Holderness sent the F.B.I. agent who had interviewed her a set of four photographs that showed her with a black eye that she said Mr. Porter had given her. She followed with another email containing more photos of her swollen eye, which she said she suffered while the couple took a trip abroad.
Rob Cromwell, a former senior F.B.I. agent who oversaw all background investigations for the bureau, including those at the White House, said it would be highly unusual for the agency not to have informed the White House of such allegations.
“A serious allegation like that? The F.B.I. would notify the White House right away,” Mr. Cromwell said. “You’re having a person exposed to classified material, and that’s a risk. The customer is notified, and the customer, in this case, is the White House.”
Mr. Porter would also have been required to disclose the accusations on the standard form, known as the SF-86, that government employees are required to complete to serve in a national security position. The form asks about specific arrests, charges, convictions and protective orders currently in effect, then makes an open-ended request for the applicant to disclose any “public record civil court action” in which they have been involved in the past 10 years. If the F.B.I. becomes aware that someone has lied on the form or omitted responsive information, it can be disqualifying.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Even as Mr. Porter’s former wives publicly pressed their accusations against him, Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, whom he has been dating, met with other White House officials in drafting the initial statements sent in Mr. Porter’s defense, according to two West Wing officials.
When the accusations first surfaced, Mr. Kelly and others issued fulsome statements of support for their colleague. The White House spent most of Wednesday defending Mr. Porter even as he announced his resignation, with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, saying the president and Mr. Kelly both had “full confidence in his abilities and his performance.”
It was only hours later on Wednesday night that Mr. Kelly issued a new statement saying he had been “shocked by the new allegations” against Mr. Porter.
Correction: February 8, 2018
A caption that appeared with a photograph with an earlier version of this article misidentified the man with John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff. He was Thomas P. Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, not Rob Porter, the staff secretary who resigned Wednesday.
Continue reading the main story
Share and Enjoy
Stocks take another tumble, Dow dives more than 1000 points
February 9, 2018 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Comments Off
The wild ride on Wall Street continued Thursday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging more than 1,000 points for the second time this week.
At the closing bell, the Dow was down 1,032 points, or 4.15 percent, finishing a tough day at 23,860.
The other major indexes also took a tumble. The SP 500 tanked 100 points to 2,581, off 3.75 percent from the previous day. The Nasdaq was down 275 points to 6,777, a 3.90 percent decline.
The Dow fell a record 1,175 points on Monday but rallied back on Tuesday to close the session up 568 points.
“I think that in some ways it is a continuation of what we saw on Monday. But the decline didn’t feel as panicked today as it did on Monday,” Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist for JonesTrading, told ABC News.
He said indications of “inflation risk on the horizon” — including higher-than-expected jobs and wage growth last week amid higher labor costs in manufacturing and non-manufacturing — was fueling the market’s nose dive.
“I think now what you are experiencing is even the fundamental buyer is a little bit nervous to see the market get its legs under it for not just one day but a few days,” Abbasi said.
Today, the Dow dipped below 24,000 for the first time since November. The index reached a record high of 26,616 on Jan. 26.
“We’re now in what we call full correction territory,” Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab, told ABC News. “The Dow Jones and the SP 500 have dipped below a 10 percent pullback from the high. So, that’s a full market correction now.”
And Frederick said the rough ride may not be over.
“I’m not ready to call the bottom,” Frederick said. “I always tell people it’s best to wait until you get an ease back in volatility and you get two good, solid days. We haven’t had that. We had one solid up day and the second day looked like it might be an up day and then it sold off into the close. I didn’t know it would be this bad today, but clearly it’s not over.”
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah told reporters that while President Donald Trump is “concerned about long-term economic indicators and factor,” his enthusiasm over the economy remains high.
“Fundamentals in terms of long-term are very strong,” Shah said. “Unemployment and the labor market are very strong. Unemployment is at 4.1 percent, we saw wages rise on Friday … at a measurable level for the first time in nearly eight years or nine years and corporate earnings are high. We believe that these long-term fundamentals demonstrate a healthy economy.”