Lawmakers losing confidence in White House after Porter resignation The House Oversight Committee kicked off an investigation into Trump’s employment of Porter and what White House officials knew about domestic abuse accusations against him.

House Republicans raised questions Wednesday about the Trump administration's security clearance process and an oversight panel launched an investigation, as the controversy surrounding former aide Rob Porter started to eat into their confidence in President Donald Trump's White House.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said his House Oversight Committee on Tuesday night kicked off an investigation into Trump’s employment of Porter — the White House staff secretary who resigned last week — and what White House officials knew about domestic abuse accusations against him.


“You can call it official. You can call it unofficial,” Gowdy said on CNN Wednesday morning. “I'm going to direct questions to the FBI that I expect them to answer. And if they don't answer them, then they're going to need to give me a really good reason.”

Senior White House officials, including chief of staff John Kelly, have struggled to explain why Porter was allowed to stay on with only an interim security clearance and despite the existence of a protective order granted to one of his ex-wives. The White House says senior staff were not fully aware of the scope of the allegations until last week, but administration officials said Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn knew the broad outlines last year.

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Asked about Gowdy's investigation into the Porter scandal Wednesday, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he had been informed of the probe and believes the White House has to improve its vetting system for employees.

"They have work to do to improve their vetting system," Ryan told reporters on Wednesday. "I don't know how exactly they'll do that; I will leave that to them. But Chairman Gowdy is doing his proper job on oversight, and yes, he did give us a heads-up."

Ryan said White House officials should condemn domestic violence. White House spokespeople have said the president condemns such abuse, but Trump has not spoken publicly or tweeted about the issue in the past week.

"Clearly, I think clearly — come on — clearly we should all be condemning domestic violence," Ryan said. "If a person who commits domestic violence gets in government, then there's a breakdown in the system. There's a breakdown in the vetting system, and that breakdown needs to be addressed."

The firestorm has also ensnared Kelly, with Trump reportedly asking friends about possible replacements.

One name that has popped up is House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who demurred on Wednesday when asked whether he has talked to Trump about being White House chief of staff.

“I have not spoken to the president about anything about a job, and I never have,” the California Republican told reporters. “And there is no job opening.”

The Porter situation has heaped scrutiny particularly on the White House's security clearance procedures. Many other White House aides have been operating on interim clearances because they have not gotten a permanent security signoff. The White House personnel security office said last fall it would stop issuing new interim clearances, but people who already had them were allowed to keep working.

Three Democrats plan to introduce legislation Wednesday to give Congress greater oversight of the White House's security clearance process. Among other provisions, the legislation, co-sponsored by Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), would limit the use of interim security clearances to a year and require the White House to submit a list of individuals with security clearances working in the Executive Office of the President to Congress every three months.

Gowdy told CNN that his investigation's initial step would be to seek a briefing from the FBI and Director Christopher Wray to get more details about the bureau’s security clearance investigation into Porter, what information about him was communicated to the White House and when. Gowdy said that information from the FBI would lead to inquiries directed at people in the Trump administration.

Wray told lawmakers Tuesday that the bureau submitted a preliminary report on Porter last March and filed further submissions last July and last November before closing its file in January. That timeline contradicted the one initially put forth by the White House, which said Porter's resignation last week came as his security clearance process was ongoing and that it was being handled by the law enforcement and intelligence community.

“I've got the dates. Do you know what he told them? That's my question. The dates are really important,” Gowdy said. “What I want to know from Chris Wray is what, with specificity, did you learn, when did you learn it and with whom did you share it and when did you share it?”

Gowdy denied a recent allegation from Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, that the committee had avoided investigating the White House's security clearance issues. But he said there were limits to his committee’s ability to compel the White House and FBI to answer questions — “unless you're Jack Bauer, you can't make people answer questions” — and urged the media and the public to put pressure on the executive branch to be more forthcoming.

“If the executive branch doesn't answer the questions, then that's when you need the public and the media to also increase the pressure,” he said. “So I get that [Wray] doesn't want to talk about an ongoing investigation. This does not appear to be ongoing to me anymore.”

Cummings, in a statement issued through the Oversight Committee, said he spoke to Gowdy Wednesday about the chairman's initiation of an investigation. The Maryland Democrat cautioned that the investigation must avoid partisanship and said that the initial requests sent to the FBI and the White House are due in two weeks.

"My understanding is that this is a first step, and I look forward to interviewing White House Counsel Don McGahn, Chief of Staff John Kelly, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and others to determine what they knew and when they knew it," Cummings said. "It is no secret that I have been extremely frustrated that our Committee has done nothing over the past year to address the completely dysfunctional security clearance system at the White House, despite my many requests. So I commend Chairman Gowdy for taking this preliminary step."

"But obviously—obviously—the credibility of this investigation will be judged by how thorough it is in obtaining documents and interviewing witnesses, and how bipartisan it is in its conclusions," he added.

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.