Third White House Official Resigns After Security Clearance Rejected – By Aaron Credeur (ijr.com) / Feb 14 2018
A senior White House official says he resigned on Tuesday after being told he would not qualify for full security clearance, according to Politico.
George David Banks, special assistant to the president for international energy and environmental policy at the National Economic Council, who has worked under an interim security clearance since February 2017, said White House officials told him that he was not approved to receive full security clearance over past marijuana use.
The move comes after two White House staffers, Rob Porter and David Sorensen, resigned over domestic abuse allegations. The White House has faced increasing scrutiny in recent weeks over its handling of the allegations and for granting interim security clearances to the staffers. Both Porter and Sorensen deny allegations of abuse from ex-wives.
The White House has reportedly been working to simplify the process of approving security access and stopped issuing new interim clearances last fall, according to Politico.
Banks said that his access was denied because he admitted to smoking marijuana in 2013, and he later submitted his resignation.
“It was an honor to serve the president at the White House, and I look forward to supporting the president in the future,” he said.
Banks emerged last year as the Trump administration’s lead policy expert on the Paris climate agreement and played an important role in the debate around whether the United States should remain in the deal.
Rejecting security clearance for an executive staffer over past drug use is somewhat rare, especially when the staffer issues a full disclosure of past conduct.
Other White House officials have expressed confusion regarding chief of staff John Kelly’s handling of the situation, and some staffers see Banks’ resignation as a result of the Porter scandal.
“The whole thing is just demoralizing,” a White House official said. “I think a lot of us are scratching our heads.”
Conflicting timelines given by the White House and the FBI about what was known about the Porter situation has caused widespread frustration.
“It seems to be more chaos as opposed to taking control of the situation and saying we made a mistake and are going to fix it in the future,” the official said. “Just put out a clear statement about what happened and let’s try to put it behind us.”
