WH Knew of Aide's Abusive Behavior For Months, But Failed to Act
Photo edited by the MRT from The Independent.
The Trump government is no stranger to controversy, but sometimes the severity of the situations are just so terrifyingly sad that it seems to matter a whole lot more than others. This particular scandal, rarely surrounding Chief of Staff John Kelly, hits many at heart.
According to reports from other news organizations and many sources, Kelly was allegedly aware of allegations of physical abuse against a top White House aide; Rob Porter. Recent reports suggested Porter resigned over the allegations from two ex-wives.
Right before Porter resigned, the White House and Kelly himself had issued statements defending the aide, slightly praising his work ethic with them. By this point, Porter was denying all of the accusations against them. He still is.
However, he then resigned even though he and the White House had been arguing that he was innocent. His resignation sparked a media frenzy, resulting in the entire White House alongside John Kelly releasing new statements condemning the abuse reports.
Ready to be shocked? John Kelly may have known for a long time that this abuse was taking place, and did not remove him from his position of which is one of the only people who have regular access to the President without meeting at any given time.
Reports had indicated that Rob Porter had a very good personality inside of work, 'misleading' the West Wing (clearly, this excludes Kelly) into thinking he was innocent. They were convinced otherwise when seeing picture evidence of his ex-wives black eye.
Kelly clearly was hiding the fact that he knew of Porter's abusive personality and past with his ex-wives, with the reason probably being that Rob was a good WH aide.
Either way, even if Kelly manages to proove that reports of his knowledge of this atrocious and disgusting crime by the hired, but never security-checked, White House aide he'd still be criticized and struggle to explain why he allowed someone so close to the President to be hired without a security clearance from the FBI.
Last year, the FBI had interviewed both of Porter's ex-wives, of which both recounted their history of abuse during their relationships. It also came to light that Porter's girlfriend, back in 2016, had reached out to these ex-wives and said she was being abused, too.
The FBI launched an investigation and refused to give security clearance for Porter, something that John Kelly clearly seemed to have either missed or chosen to ignore. For the self-proclaimed and WH-proclaimed 'detailed leader', he clearly missed the biggest detail.