Rather than circling the wagons after the F.B.I. director spoke, a number of White House officials appear to have blabbed to reporters about what a mess Kelly has made of things. Photograph by T.J. Kirkpatrick / Bloomberg via Getty

The story about alleged domestic abusers being employed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been going for more than a week now, and it keeps getting worse, especially for the White House chief of staff, John Kelly. On Tuesday, Christopher Wray, the director of the F.B.I., testified on Capitol Hill and openly contradicted some of the White House’s claims about the background investigation that the Bureau carried out on Rob Porter, the West Wing staffer who resigned late last week, after it emerged that two of his ex-wives had accused him of physically and mentally abusing them.

Prior to Wray’s testimony, the White House had repeatedly claimed that the F.B.I.’s security checks into Porter’s background hadn’t been completed before last Tuesday, when the British newspaper the Daily Mail published its initial scoop about the spousal-abuse allegations against Porter. The White House has also insisted that, prior to the Daily Mail story appearing, senior officials, Kelly included, were unaware of the full nature of these allegations.

“I can’t get into the content of what was briefed to the White House,” Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, when he was asked about the matter. “What I can tell you is that the F.B.I. submitted a partial report on the investigation in question in March. And then a completed background investigation in late July. That, soon thereafter, we received request for follow-up inquiry, and we did the follow-up and provided that information in November, and that we administratively closed the file in January.”

In other words, the F.B.I. updated the White House four times about the progress of its investigation into Porter. Exactly what information the Bureau passed along still isn’t clear. But, not long after Wray’s testimony, the Times reported that the F.B.I. “first provided the White House in July with a rundown of the spousal abuse allegations the bureau had uncovered against Mr. Porter.”

Even before Wray’s testimony, problems with the White House’s handling of the Porter matter—and, particularly, the role played by Kelly—had been exposed. Shortly before the Daily Mail published a photograph of Porter’s first wife with a black eye, the White House gave the paper a statement in which Kelly described him as “a man of true integrity and honor.” Clearly, though, Wray’s account deepened the crisis enveloping Kelly and his colleagues. And, rather than circling the wagons after the F.B.I. director spoke, a number of White House officials appear to have blabbed to reporters about what a mess Kelly has made of things.

“Inside the West Wing, a growing number of aides blamed Trump’s second White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, for the bungled handling of the allegations against Porter,” the Washington Post reported on Tuesday evening. Earlier in the day, Axios reported, “Chief of Staff John Kelly’s White House enemies are ready to use FBI Director Chris Wray’s testimony as a weapon: ‘Wray’s FBI timeline makes one thing clear: the Kelly coverup is unraveling right before our eyes,’ a White House official says.”

Which official could this last quote have come from? In this White House, the possibilities are many. Perhaps it could have been someone in the White House press office who was furious about being asked to tell a story so full of holes that it quickly fell apart. On Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, in her daily briefing, was reduced to claiming that, although “the F.B.I. portion” of the background investigation into Porter had been closed, as Wray said it had, the “White House personnel-security office, who is the one that makes a recommendation for adjudication, had not finished their process and therefore not made a recommendation to the White House.”

Alternatively, perhaps the source of the “Kelly coverup” quote was an ally of one of the people whom Kelly has pushed out of the White House since he took the chief-of-staff job, last July. There are certainly plenty of folks who have a beef with him. “Based on FBI testimony, WH Chief of Staff John Kelly almost certainly knew about credible allegations of domestic abuse against Rob Porter at least 6 months ago - then recently forced others to lie about that timeline. Inexcusable. Kelly must resign,” Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, whom Kelly fired during his first week on the job, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

There’s even a theory that Trump’s own family members—Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner—might now be out to get Kelly, despite their support for his appointment back in the summer. Last month, Vanity Fair reported that the President had called Kelly a “nut job” and quoted an unnamed friend of Ivanka’s who said that the President’s daughter was “trying to figure who replaces Kelly.”

The White House vehemently denied that story, and, over the weekend, it again sought to knock down the notion that Kelly is on his way out. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kellyanne Conway, a counsellor to Trump, said that the President had asked her in advance of her appearance to say “ ‘that I have full faith in Chief of Staff John Kelly and that I’m not actively searching for replacements.’ ” Conway went on, “He says that General Kelly’s doing a great job, and he has full faith in him.”

Conway said this on Sunday. After Wray’s testimony, Kelly would now appear to be on even weaker ground. On Tuesday, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal asked him if he should have handled the Porter situation any differently. “No,” Kelly replied. “It was all done right.”