Rachel Maddow damningly laid out how Trump jeopardizes national security with his pattern of allowing people like Mike Flynn and Rob Porter to still handle classified information after the White House has been warned about security clearance problems.
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Rachel Maddow damningly laid out how Trump jeopardizes national security with his pattern of allowing people like Mike Flynn and Rob Porter to handle classified information after the White House has been warned about security clearance problems. #maddow https://t.co/8jplUBX3D4 pic.twitter.com/yXV7Q6hpR5
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 14, 2018
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Maddow said:
The behavior of senior White House officials, the more damaging aspects of the scandals are about the White House reaction once they were informed about the troubling behavior of these officials. Remember in Mike Flynn’s case, it was the acting attorney general and head of the national security division at the justice department physically personally came to the white house to warn that Mike Flynn was a serious security risk.
There was good reason to believe he had been compromised by a foreign government while he was serving as national security advisor. Now, the revelations about Flynn’s behavior and his lies about his behavior, they did ultimately lead to Flynn’s resignation, but the delay between the warning and him leaving the white house is still now the bigger scandal for the white house. There is on going open questions about why the white house waited 18 days after that hair on fire warning from the justice department before they did anything about Flynn. 18 days where Flynn continued access to the most highly classified information in the U.S. Government. That was the Flynn scandal. Similarly, Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary, that scandal, Chris Wray testified there were problems for the security clearance last month. They were informed there might be problems with porter getting a clearance. According to Chris Wray they contacted what the White House with problems with the clearance and issued a final report in July, a report where the FBI said they determined from a national security standpoint porter couldn’t be cleared for classified information. The white house reportedly asked the FBI followup questions about the problems with porter’s clearance and the FBI got back to them in November. Porter was not granted a permanent security clearance. The FBI closed the file in January and got additional information about his case this month in February.
Director Wray says he hand that to the FBI, as well. There are multiple notifications about the problems with Rob Porter and why he’s not getting cleared to handle classified materials. In Flynn’s case, it was 18 days after the warning. Here from the initial notification it looks like it was 11 months.
Eleven months. The White House was ready to promote someone who couldn’t get national security clearance, and they kept him on staff for eleven months. The covering up for a serial wife beater shows that Trump has turned the White House into a moral cesspool. The fact that these same ugly human beings are also playing fast and loose with security clearances and classified information is borderline treasonous and an impeachable offense.
John Kelly is a symptom. The disease is Donald Trump.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
