Bureau Director Tells Senate Committee the Administration Was Told of Aide’s Violent History
Lyin’ White House. The White House has been lying for the past week about former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter’s security clearance status, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed Tuesday in Senate testimony.
Porter resigned last week amid the publication of allegations that he committed domestic assault against both of his ex-wives.
Porter was still operating on an interim security clearance more than one year into his job. It was reported last week that an FBI background check had turned up the domestic assault accusations.
The White House has consistently said that the FBI security clearance process was “ongoing,” implying that the FBI had not concluded its report on Porter.
“The process for the background was ongoing, and the White House had not received any specific papers regarding the completion of that background check,” press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on Monday, echoing the official White House stance from last week.
On Tuesday, Wray contradicted that position. “We administratively closed [Porter’s] file in January,” he said during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Earlier this month we received some additional information and we passed that on as well.”
When asked who was telling the truth, Sanders said that “both” she and Wray were. “The White House personnel security office, staffed by career officials, received information last year and what they considered to be the final background investigation report in November, but they had not made a final recommendation for adjudication to the White House because the process was still ongoing when Rob Porter resigned,” Sanders said.
New gerrymander rejected. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, rejected a Republican-drawn map that purported to remedy the current partisan gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that those districts unlawfully favored Republicans under the state constitution and ordered the elected branches to draw up a new map. Wolf’s repudiation of Republican legislators’ proposed plan all but ensures that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will instead commission a nonpartisan map for the 2018 midterms.
Election interference. As the midterm elections approach, Russia is likely to throw more propaganda at Americans, using people sympathetic to their messages and fake personalities on social media—many of them run by bots—to sow further political and social divisions in the United States, the top American intelligence officials said on Tuesday. The intelligence chiefs warned the Senate Intelligence Committee, during an annual hearing on worldwide threats that Russia believes its interference in the 2016 presidential election largely achieved its chief aim—weakening faith in American democracy. Moscow now sees the coming congressional elections as a chance to build on its gains, they said.
More methane! The Trump administration moved to repeal one of the last unchallenged climate-change regulations rushed into place in the waning days of the Obama presidency—a rule restricting the release of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere. The rule, which applied to companies drilling for energy on federal land, has been the subject of intense court battles and delay efforts, as well as one surprise vote last year in which Senate Republicans temporarily saved it from being torpedoed. Methane, which is about 25 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, accounts for 9 percent of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions; about a third of that is estimated to come from oil and gas operations.
Lock him up? Israeli police on Tuesday recommended corruption charges be brought against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a move that could lead to a formal indictment and threaten the grip on power of one of Trump’s most stalwart foreign allies. The police said prosecutors should charge the Israeli leader for receiving gifts from businessmen, including billionaire Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer, according to a statement. They also said Netanyahu tried to negotiate favorable coverage in a newspaper in return for limiting the influence of another daily.