White House Regrets Its Handling of Rob Porter Case: ‘We All Could Have Done Better’
February 9, 2018 by admin
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“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.”
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By CHRIS CIRILLO and SARAH STEIN KERR on Publish Date February 8, 2018.
Photo by Eric Thayer for The New York Times.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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Government Shutdown Set as Rand Paul Protests Budget Deal
February 9, 2018 by admin
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“I think the country’s worth a debate until 3 in the morning, frankly,” he said.
Before Mr. Paul waged his assault on the budget deal, trouble was already brewing in the House, where angry opposition from the Republicans’ most ardent conservative members, coupled with Democratic dissenters dismayed that the deal did nothing for young undocumented immigrants, was creating fresh tension as the clock ticked toward midnight.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats that she would oppose the deal, and said Democrats would have leverage if they held together to demand a debate on immigration legislation. But she suggested she would not stand in the way of lawmakers who wanted to vote their conscience.
The struggle to push the bill through the House highlighted the divisions within the Democratic caucus over how hard to push on the issue of immigration as Congress prepares to turn its focus to that politically volatile subject.
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Al Drago for The New York Times
The text of the deal, stretching more than 600 pages, was released late Wednesday night, revealing provisions large and small that would go far beyond the basic budget numbers. The accord would raise strict spending caps on domestic and military spending in this fiscal year and the next one by about $300 billion in total. It would also lift the federal debt limit until March 2019 and includes almost $90 billion in disaster relief in response to last year’s hurricanes and wildfires.
Critically, it would also keep the government funded for another six weeks, giving lawmakers time to put together a long-term spending bill that would stretch through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The previous temporary funding measure was set to expire at midnight on Thursday.
The deal had been expected to sail through the Senate, and the House had planned to vote on it later Thursday, until Mr. Paul took his stand.
The White House Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to prepare for a possible lapse in funding, a spokeswoman said Thursday night. The shutdown would be the second of the year, coming after a three-day closure last month when the vast majority of Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans, including Mr. Paul, blocked a bill that would have kept the government open.
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This time around, Senate leaders from both parties nudged Mr. Paul to stop holding up the vote.
“It’s his right, of course, to vote against the bill, but I would argue that it’s time to vote,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader.
His Democratic counterpart, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, echoed the sentiment. “We’re in risky territory here,” Mr. Schumer warned.
Among the Democratic ranks in the House, the objections were also strenuous, but for reasons very different from Mr. Paul’s.
With the monthslong budget impasse appearing to be on the cusp of a resolution, lawmakers were girding for a fight over the fate of young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children, known as Dreamers, as well as President Trump’s plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico and other possible immigration policy changes.
Graphic
Budget Deficits Would Balloon Under the Bipartisan Spending Deal
The two-year budget agreement reached by Senate leaders would contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to federal deficits.
The uncertain outlook for immigration legislation, and the disagreements on the best strategy to move forward, was starkly apparent as Ms. Pelosi commanded the House floor for more than eight hours on Wednesday in an effort to help the young immigrants. She said she would oppose the budget deal unless Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin offered a commitment to hold a vote on legislation in the House that would address the fate of the Dreamers.
On Thursday, Ms. Pelosi herself displayed the conflicting pressures on Democrats. She simultaneously hailed the budget deal while proclaiming she would vote against it. In a letter to colleagues, she explained her opposition to the deal, but also nodded to its virtues and held back from pressuring other Democrats to vote against it.
“I’m pleased with the product,” she told reporters. “I’m not pleased with the process.”
Mr. Ryan, for his part, stressed his desire to address the fate of the young immigrants. But he did not offer the kind of open-ended commitment that might assuage Ms. Pelosi. Instead, he signaled that whatever bill the House considers would be one that Mr. Trump supports.
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“To anyone who doubts my intention to solve this problem and bring up a DACA and immigration reform bill, do not,” he told reporters. “We will bring a solution to the floor, one that the president will sign.”
The fate of the Dreamers has been in question since Mr. Trump moved in September to end the Obama-era program that shields them from deportation, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. The president gave Congress six months to come up with a solution to resolve their fate.
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In recent months, Democrats have tried to make use of the leverage they have in fiscal negotiations, and the issue of immigration played a central role in last month’s shutdown. But Democrats have struggled to determine how hard they should push.
In last month’s closure, most Senate Democrats voted to block a bill that would have kept the government open, only to retreat a few days later and agree to end the closure after Mr. McConnell promised a Senate debate on immigration.
This time, House Democrats were clearly split in their calculations about the best way to exert influence over immigration.
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Erin Schaff for The New York Times
Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois, demanded that Ms. Pelosi use her muscle to “stop the Democrats from folding.”
“Anyone who votes for the Senate budget deal is colluding with this president and this administration to deport Dreamers,” he said. “It is as simple as that.”
Democrats also ran the risk of angering liberal activists who want to see them take a stand. Ben Wikler, the Washington director for MoveOn.org, said House Democrats would be making a strategic mistake by voting for the budget deal.
“If you’re looking at a boulder and you have a choice between a lever or your bare hands, you should use the lever,” he said.
But Democrats secured important victories in the budget pact, obtaining big increases in funding for domestic programs. Voting against those wins to take a stand on DACA — and possibly shutting down the government — carried its own political risks.
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Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, noted that the budget deal “meets nearly every one of our priorities.”
“If Democrats cannot support this kind of compromise, Congress will never function,” he said.
The spotlight was on House Democrats in part because it became apparent that Republican leaders most likely lacked the votes to push the budget deal through the House with only votes from their own party.
A sizable number of House Republicans are rebelling against the deal because of its huge increase in spending. The conservative House Freedom Caucus, which has roughly three dozen members, formally opposed the deal.
“It was pretty much a smorgasbord of spending and policy that got added to this,” said Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Freedom Caucus. “Normally, people who eat at smorgasbords all the time are not the healthiest.”
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