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John Kelly Must Resign

Statement of NOW President Toni Van Pelt

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly must resign. His pathetic defense of staff secretary Rob Porter reveals his true nature—an enabler of domestic violence, a betrayer of trust and an avoider of responsibility.

Why did John Kelly continue to support Rob Porter after he was told about Porter’s history of abuse? Why did he allow a man who was denied a security clearance because of his history of violence against women to continue in a high ranking position of trust? Why did he talk Rob Porter out of resigning, telling him he could “weather the storm,” according to press accounts?

General Kelly should know better. As a military commander, he took pride in protecting his troops. As chief of staff, it is his duty to protect the people who serve in the White House. Women who work for John Kelly are asking themselves today if they can trust General Kelly to protect them from perpetrators of domestic violence.

Clearly, they can’t. John Kelly has shown his true colors. He’s on Team “Grab Them By The Pussy,” leaving women who are victimized by domestic violence to fend for themselves.

John Kelly must go. Today.

A senior administration official told POLITICO earlier Wednesday that Kelly and other top White House officials were aware of the allegations, including the 2010 protective order, weeks and in some cases months before they were made public.

The allegations held up Porter’s application for a security clearance, the official said, adding that Porter had been working with an interim clearance. Both of his ex-wives reportedly told the FBI about their experiences with Porter.

In recent weeks, an ex-girlfriend of Porter’s — who also works in the Trump administration — contacted White House counsel Don McGahn and voiced her distress after discovering evidence of a romantic relationship between Porter and White House communications director Hope Hicks, according to two administration officials.

She also alleged that he had abused his two ex-wives.

It is unclear what McGahn did with the information he received, or whether he viewed it as a violation of White House rules and procedures. McGahn did not immediately respond to a request for comment

Kelly defended Porter both on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon. He issued a statement praising Porter to the Daily Mail in response to a story in which Jennifer Willoughby, one of Porter’s ex-wives, said he was verbally abusive and, in 2010, pulled her out of the shower by the shoulders to yell at her. The Daily Mail also published a copy of a protective order obtained by Willoughby in 2010.

“Rob Porter is 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,” Kelly told the paper. “I am proud to serve alongside him.”

Kelly issued the same statement again on Wednesday afternoon after Porter announced he would resign. By that time, the Daily Mail and the Intercept had published articles featuring interviews with Porter’s other ex-wife, Colbie Holderness, in which she alleges he physically abused her and punched her in the face. The articles included photographs of bruising around Holderness’ eye.

Kelly issued his after-hours statement at 9:31 p.m. Wednesday, hours after the photographs were published.

I also have no doubt that they have meddled in every presidential election since Calvin Coolidge ran what might have been the most civil campaign in US history and crushed the Democrat challenger John H. Davis.

I have spent the past 18 months with about a thousand other people like me enlisted in the military in one of the worst kinds of limbo I can imagine: waiting for my military basic training to start, but facing the possibility that the country I’ve sworn to die protecting might deport me.

I’m a Dreamer—one of hundreds of thousands of people who came to the United States as children, grew up here, enrolled in school, paid taxes, and otherwise lived my life as an ordinary American. In 2012, when President Barack Obama announced a program to help us stay here legally, we were thrilled. Now, with courts and the Trump Justice Department throwing that program—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—in doubt, while Congress considers a permanent solution, we’re back in limbo.

Throughout the course of the debate over DACA, which stalled budget talks in Congress in late January and led to a government shutdown, President Donald Trump and other Republicans have tried to force a false on voters: the military or DACA recipients. “DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military,” Trump tweeted in mid-January. A few days later: “A government shutdown will be devastating to our military...something the Dems care very little about!”

This choice might make sense if you think of the military as all native-born Americans. But more than 10,400 recruits have gotten their citizenship through the same program I was supposed to enter—MAVNI, which stands for Military Accessions Vital to National Interest—since 2009, to say nothing of the legal immigrants and children of immigrants at all levels (without MAVNI, undocumented immigrants are not allowed to enlist). There are hundreds of us who are just waiting for our background checks to go through so we can go to basic training, a result of the Trump administration’s “increased vetting” of MAVNI program entrants. Unless Congress reaches a deal on DACA that both Republicans and Democrats can agree to, some of our DACA statuses expire will expire, and we’ll be deported before we can join up and serve the country we see as our own.

I am one of the lucky ones—my DACA status was just renewed in 2017. So as the military continues to sort out what it will do for the DACA recipients trying to fast-track their citizenship through the MAVNI program, I have more than a year of wiggle room. If I pass the security clearances, I can start boot camp, and I’ll be able to get my citizenship through the MAVNI program. If I’m not able to start boot camp, I’ll have to fall back on DACA—which will run out in 2019 if Congress doesn’t make a deal by March 5.

I’m 25 years old. I came to the United States at the age of six from Brazil and have never left the United States since. I entered the first grade when I came here and learned English within the following year. I’m now in my 3rd year as an undergraduate at University of Central Florida majoring in criminal justice and law enforcement. I also work full-time as an office manager at a pediatric doctor’s office in Florida. I am professionally fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

I wanted to be a police officer growing up, but as I reached high school, I understood that wasn’t a possibility for me. I was not eligible to join local or federal law enforcement because I was not a U.S. citizen. There were no other career fields I thought about; for me, law enforcement was it. I knew it was possible to get a leg up in the career through the military.

I graduated from high school in 2011, and that was when I realized just how little opportunity there was for me here as an undocumented immigrant who had only ever known America but didn’t have the paperwork that would allow me to go to school or get a job. I had to pay out-of-state tuition for the first year of college, which was 4 times the rate everybody else paid. Every job I applied for asked for work authorization and rejected me. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t work. I felt like I had so much energy to devote myself to one thing, but the vision I had for my life was falling just short of reality.

My sister and I both applied for DACA as soon as Obama announced it. Since then, DACA has allowed me to have a job that pays my rent and bills and gives me the privilege of in-state tuition in Florida. It lets me help pay some of the bills for my fiancée, who will graduate from nursing school this summer, and my parents, who live in Orlando with me.

I have no ties to my home country and have nothing to fall back on if I would ever would have to go back to Brazil. If I have to go back, I’d leave my sister, who became a citizen through marriage, and my parents, who she has sponsored, behind.

So yes, I am talking about fairness. The military made a promise to us, and they should deliver on it. I shouldn’t have to read the news as soon as I wake up every day to try to figure out if Congress is any closer to making a deal so that the government—my government—can deliver on that promise.

Maybe you don’t care about me or my future. Maybe you think that since my parents came here illegally, I deserve my fate. But consider this: The plight of people like me will affect the future of the military, too.

MAVNI, the program I used to enter the military, was founded to meet a critical need: medical and language expertise. Right after it was implemented, the program was hailed as a major success. “We don’t see this normally; the quality for this population is off the charts,” Lt. Col. Pete Badoian, a strategic planner at the recruiting branch of the Army, told the New York Times in 2010. That had a lot to do with the skills of the interpreters the program attracted; in the program’s first year, Admiral Eric T. Olson, the senior commander for Special Operations, told Congress that the program had already “demonstrated great success.”

Warfare has changed after Iraq and Afghanistan. Regional expertise, language proficiency and cultural competence are now recognized as core military needs. And there are plenty of other reasons we make perfectly good soldiers, despite our “espionage potential,” in the words of Defense Secretary James Mattis. Recruits who start out as non-citizens stay in the military longer than those who start out as citizens, research shows. Why would America want to turn us away?

There’s a long history of non-citizens fighting and dying in America’s wars. In 2005, Army Specialist Kendall Frederick, a Trinidad native and reservist from Maryland, died in Iraq. He wasn’t a citizen because administrative delays had held up his application. When he was on his way to be re-fingerprinted at a U.S. base in Iraq—to try to clear up the red tape—he was killed by a roadside bomb. He’s buried in Arlington Cemetery. “My son put his life on the line for this country,” his mother said, “yet he had to beg for his citizenship.”

Congress passed a law in Kendall’s name—the Kendall Frederick Citizenship Act—because lawmakers decided it was the right thing to do, and President George W. Bush signed it in 2008. That was 10 years ago, and people who are willing to die for their country are still fighting to call themselves American citizens. As the deadline to save DACA looms, and as people like me face “enhanced vetting” before we can even join boot camp, it’s worth asking if the politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, have changed their minds.

I want to fight for this country. I’m willing to die for it. Do the right thing.

Correction: A version of this story previously said that more than 10,400 Dreamers had gotten their citizenship through the MAVNI program. That number was all MAVNI recruits, not just Dreamers.

If I have to go back, I’d leave my sister, who became a citizen through marriage, and my parents, who she has sponsored, behind.

Another longtime Comey aide leaving FBI

Michael Kortan, the longtime head of public affairs at the FBI -- who was a confidant of former director James Comey -- is planning to retire, Fox News has learned.

Kortan recently surfaced in text messages released between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

In a September 2016 text, Strzok wrote that “there are VERY inflammatory things in the 302s we didn’t turn over to [Congress]…that are going to come out in FOIA and absolutely inflames Congress. I’m sure Jim and Trisha and Dave and Mike are all considering how things like that play out as they talk amongst themselves.”

“Mike” would appear to be a reference to Kortan.

Kortan is the most recent senior FBI official to retire. Others have been reassigned since Comey was fired by President Trump in May 2017. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who also was close to Comey, is stepping down amid questions about his handling of the Clinton email case.

Liberals hate America, hate freedom, and hate democracy.

That is why liberals always try to undermine America's ability to defend ourselves.

And that is why liberals always want terrorists and evil dictators to be unopposed in their quests for illegal weapons.