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Since the scandal over his top aide Rob Porter’s domestic violence record broke over a week ago, rumors about the imminent resignation of White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly have been swirling.
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The White House has gone out of its way to dismiss the rumblings, with statements of support coming from Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom claim that Kelly will remain for the long haul.
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With the scandal only growing, however, especially since the FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed yesterday that his agency informed the White House about problems with Porter’s background check as early as last summer, fingers are looking for someone to point at to blame for the unprecedented security breach that allowed Porter to access highly classified material without a permanent security clearance.
Now, the White House correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, has put forth a new theory about who has been leaking the negative rumors about the stability of Kelly’s job in the Oval Office, and her fingers are pointing directly at Donald Trump himself.
In a thread on Twitter, Haberman discloses what she’s learned from staff insiders about the scandal and the rumors of Kelly’s potential ouster.
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The morale was already quite low in the Kelly era for several staff. But this is worse than it’s been since Charlottesville. And after dismissing Kelly dismissal talks as spread by Mooch/others, ppl close to Kelly now realize it’s coming from Trump.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 14, 2018
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It wouldn’t be surprising that the man who once impersonated his own publicity agent to brag about his accomplishments would take matters into his own hands in dealing with the growing distraction from continuing to implement his heinous agenda, but the mixed messages emanating from the White House on Kelly’s fate are only making the situation worse.
Haberman isn’t sure whether the finding that President Trump is behind the most damaging assessments of Kelly’s future in the face of calls from Congress to investigate the White House security procedures is equivalent to an imminent resignation or firing, as she says in the last segment of her Twitter thread.
BUT it is hard for these people to discern whether this is Trump venting or whether he is moving closer to actually making a move.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 14, 2018
The problem for Trump of course is that Porter was not the only, or even the most senior, White House staffer working with highly classified information without the benefit of a permanent security clearance. If Trump were to remove Kelly for his handling of Porter’s case, the inevitable question will be why is his son-in-law Jared Kushner still allowed to work in the Oval Office without full security clearance over a year into the administration.
With Congress having spent millions investigating Hillary Clinton over the security implications of running a private server, a risk that pales in comparison to what the Trump administration has been guilty of allowing, the continuance of the lackadaisical attitude towards clearance status of the most senior members of the administration is not only perplexing, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people and a major breach of their trust, at least for those who ever placed an ounce of trust in the biggest con-man ever elected to the presidency.
