The FBI first notified the White House more than a year ago about spousal abuse allegations against disgraced aide Rob Porter, according to a new timeline that disputes the Trump administration's account of how it dealt with the scandal, The New York Times reported.
Porter, the president's staff secretary, resigned under pressure in February after allegations were revealed he had been physically violent toward two former wives.
Afterward, White House officials — including chief of staff John Kelly — insisted they had not known about the bombshell allegations until Porter stepped down.
But in a letter this month to the leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a top FBI official said on March 3, 2017, the bureau sent a "partial report" on Porter "addressed to the counsel to the president, Donald F. McGahn, which contained derogatory information," the Times reported.
An unnamed former federal law enforcement official said the violent abuse allegations were included in that file.
The White House previously claimed the March report contained only basic employment information about Porter, not allegations of abuse.
The FBI furnished a more complete report to the White House personnel security office in July, according to the letter, the Times reported.
A White House official said he never saw the report; rather, aides believe it was reviewed by an underling and passed on to the White House personnel security office, which reviews FBI background investigations as part of its process for evaluating whether officials should receive security clearances.
"Don never saw it," the unnamed official told the Times. "The right people never saw it."
Kelly has since revised clearance procedures at the White House, stripping interim clearances from some senior officials who had been working with temporary ones for months, most prominently Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser.
Among the changes Kelly instituted was a new requirement that if the FBI uncovers "significantly derogatory" information about a White House official, it must brief the White House counsel in person on the material, the Times reported.
The White House official told the Times that McGahn specifically requested the change to rectify what happened in Porter's case, when he felt he was being held responsible for having information he had never seen.
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