Trump White House Fingered Corey Lewandowski in Rob Porter ‘Smear Campaign’ – By Lachlan Markay & Asawin Suebsaeng (dailybeast.com) / Feb 8 2018
On Tuesday afternoon, senior White House officials reached out to Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) office with an urgent request. They needed the Utah Republican to put together a statement praising his former chief of staff and then-White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter.
At issue was a story that was about to pop from the British tabloid, the Daily Mail, in which two of Porter’s ex-wives detailed the emotional and physical abuse they endured by him.
The White House officials told Hatch’s office that the story was the product of a “smear campaign” being orchestrated against Porter by his political enemies. Among those they pinpointed was former Trump campaign manager (and current outside adviser to the president) Corey Lewandowski, according to two sources familiar with the conversations. Multiple White House staffers told Hatch himself that Lewandowski “was digging into Rob’s previous marriages,” recalled one source, who said Porter himself was among the officials who fingered Lewandowski.
Reached by phone on Thursday, Lewandowski flatly denied that he had anything to do with the allegations against Porter. “I’ve never had a bad word about Rob Porter,” he insisted. “I think he did a very good job, and I wish him the very best.” Lewandowski had, indeed, been speaking critically of Porter behind the scenes, as The Daily Beast previously reported. But he said he was surprised to learn that senior White House officials had implicated him in an alleged campaign to facilitate his ouster.
Hatch’s office ultimately sent the statement to the White House before the Daily Mail’s first story surfaced—and before, the source said, Hatch knew that his former staffer was being accused of physically assaulting his ex-wife, or that a story on the allegations was imminent. But Hatch largely stood by his sentiments the next day, when he encouraged Porter to “keep a stiff upper lip and work on his problems.”
By that point, Porter had already announced his resignation, making the frantic effort to save his job both moot and painfully tone deaf. It also raised a series of questions for the White House over its handling of the matter. Chief among them being: How long did they know about Porter’s past and why, exactly, were they so eager to defend a credibly accused wife-beater that they petitioned the most senior member of the U.S. Senate to serve as a character witness?
Reached by The Daily Beast on Thursday, after a day of withering questions on just those topics, a White House official said only that, “The White House feels misled by Mr. Porter’s characterization of the [then] impending allegations from his ex-wives.”
