Rob Porter's History of Domestic Abuse Wasn't a Secret. It's Just That No One Cared.

The cops, the FBI, and the White House chief of staff all knew, and he still continued to rise through the ranks of our government’s highest office.

By DAHLIA LITHWICK

FEB 08, 20182:54 PM

As it turns out, the first #MeToo story to actually trip up the White House needed to be as graphic and violent as the accusations against Rob Porter. It needed to involve a Rhodes Scholar golden boy who had been married—married—to old-fashioned girls to even count. This, and indeed the entire situation, provides the perfect mirror to reflect all the ways in which systems, all systems, fail women.

Until Wednesday, Rob Porter was the White House staff secretary. Long before Wednesday, many of the people to whom he reported knew he had physically abused and assaulted both of his wives. Colbie Holderness, Porter’s first wife, and Jennifer Willoughby, Porter’s second wife, both told the FBI their marriages had ended because of a pattern of physical and emotional abuse. According to their accounts, supported by photos, contemporaneous reporting to others, and a blog post written by Willoughby last April, Porter kicked these women, he punched and choked one of these women, he blackened one of these women’s eyes. He berated and insulted these women. Police were called. But Rob Porter is also white, and the son of a prominent academic and thinker. He went to Harvard and Oxford, and he had a high-ranking job in the Oval Office, and was reportedly pressing for a higher one. He was dating Hope Hicks, one of the president’s closest confidantes. So nobody did a thing about the allegations.

Right up until Tuesday night, Chief of Staff John Kelly was praising Porter as “a man of true integrity and honor and I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidante, and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him.”

Willoughby’s blog post detailing her abuse did not name Porter, but it did use her own name.

It has been live since April 24, 2017. She wrote: “The first time he called me a ‘fucking bitch’ was on our honeymoon. (I found out years later he had kicked his first wife on theirs.)” Porter reportedly begged her to take it down because anyone who read it had to have known it was referencing Rob Porter, the guy at the White House. Another thing that is clear from the blog post is that the police knew: Willoughby filed for a protective order in Arlington, Virginia, in 2010, and she called them on at least one other occasion. Both women reported the abuse to elders in their church and to counselors. Holderness told her brother and his girlfriend. And then, as their mutual ex-husband was being cleared for his job in the White House last spring, both women told the FBI. They actually thought, at that point, somebody might care.

Please stop saying that women don’t tell. These women told. They told the stories of likely the most intimate and traumatic moments of their lives to family and church elders and friends and counselors and FBI officers, and they saw the following happen: Porter was not given full clearance. He was, however, given an interim security clearance. Senior staff in the White House knew why his clearance was snagged by the fall. According to Politico, John Kelly, Donald Trump’s chief of staff and Porter’s boss, also knew of the 2010 protective order against Porter. Don McGahn, the White House counsel, also knew according to Politico, because in recent weeks a third woman, an ex-girlfriend of Porter’s who also works in the Trump administration, told him that Porter had abused her and his two ex-wives.

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/rob-porters-history-of-domestic-abuse-wasnt-a-secret.html