The White House knew about problems with the staff secretary Rob Porter’s security clearance nearly a year before he was forced to resign, F.B.I. director Christopher Wray said this week. We know now that the hold up on his clearance was tied to allegations of domestic abuse — and the Trump White House seems to have known that by last November, too.

This contradicts Trump aides’ reassurances that they were as shocked as anyone to read about Porter’s alleged misogynist violence in The Daily Mail last week. (I fail to see how the notion that the executive branch gets its intelligence from The Daily Mail could possibly be reassuring to any sentient creature crawling this planet’s sizzling crust, but many things are beyond me these days.)

Wray testified that the F.B.I. sent the White House a partial report about the “problems” with Porter in March 2017, following that with a full background check in July, and a further update in November. The investigation was “administratively closed” in January, several weeks before Donald Trump presumably — according to the White House’s initial timeline — heard about the allegations against his buddy.

True to form for the Trump White House, even doing nothing was an unachievably high bar. Not only was Porter allowed to remain in his position (and briefly defended by the administration after the allegations finally became public), at the time of his termination he was reportedly being considered for multiple promotions: speechwriting, an expanded policy portfolio, a crack at deputy chief of staff. CNN reported that chief of staff John Kelly, aware of the allegations for months, “told associates that Porter was one of the few competent professionals on his staff and wanted to ensure that he was being used to his full potential.” One wonders if Kelly saw the photographs of Porter’s ex-wife’s face, the gold and the purple nimbus around her eye, the angry swell, the throb of it.