President Trump has spent the past week weighing a change in the leadership of his West Wing as the fallout from chief of staff John Kelly’s handling of a major personnel crisis continues to engulf the White House.
Kelly’s initial decision to stand by Rob Porter, the former staff secretary who resigned last week amid allegations of domestic abuse, has come under harsh scrutiny now that the FBI has made clear the chief of staff knew about Porter’s history for months before the scandal broke publicly.
Sources close to the White House say Trump may dismiss Kelly in the days ahead, which would mark his second chief of staff change in less than a year. Trump replaced former chief of staff Reince Priebus with Kelly in July.
“There’s a change coming. They’re looking for the replacement but they don’t have one nailed down yet,” said one source close to the White House who has recently spoken with Trump.
Among the names that have been floated as potential chiefs of staff are Gary Cohn, the current head of the National Economic Council, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Shortly before choosing Kelly to step in for Priebus last year, Trump had strongly considered and even interviewed Pompeo for the position, a source told the Washington Examiner at the time.
One source close to the White House cautioned against choosing Cohn as the next chief of staff. Cohn has long drawn suspicion among Trump’s populist allies over what they perceive to be his insufficient commitment to the Trump agenda.
“It would not be a wise choice [to replace Kelly with Gary Cohn]. He was an Obama bundler and everyone thinks he voted for Clinton. So that would cause a big backlash both among the Republican establishment but also with the president’s base,” the source said.
Kelly came into the White House last summer with a mandate to clean up the chaos and infighting that has festered under Priebus’ leadership. After dismissing the firebrand communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, and streamlining the process by which information reaches the president’s desk, Kelly cracked down on the access to Trump outsiders and old friends had managed to gain during Priebus’ tenure.
That left the four-star Marine general with a circle of enemies outside the administration who resented his efforts to limit their contact with Trump.
Inside the administration, Kelly instilled a sense of order and direction that was missing from the first six months of the Trump presidency. And until recently, he had steered the White House successfully through several controversies without making any missteps of his own.
That changed last month when Kelly said privately and repeated publicly that Trump’s promise to build a Mexico-funded wall along the Southwest border was “uninformed.” The comments reportedly angered Trump and marked the first time in months that his unhappiness with Kelly spilled into public view.
Kelly’s handling of the Porter situation has thrown his future as chief of staff in doubt, however. Beyond the speculation that Kelly knew about the allegations against Porter for months, the episode has raised further questions about the number of high-level staffers Kelly has allowed to operate on temporary security clearances due to red flags in their background checks.
Although Porter’s job as staff secretary required him to handle just about every piece of paper that made its way to Trump, he relied on an interim clearance for 13 months because his ex-wives’ claims that he physically abused them during their respective marriages had prevented him from receiving a permanent clearance. White House officials have struggled to answer questions about how and why Porter was able to remain in his position for so long without a permanent clearance.
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., opened an investigation on Wednesday into the process by which Porter received his interim security clearance.
Another source close to the White House said Gowdy’s probe could serve as the basis for Kelly’s dismissal.
“Kelly’s actions triggered a congressional investigation at the request of a Republican chairman,” the source said.
“Gossip may have been murky before, but someone can make the case that triggering a congressional investigation is fireable,” the source added.
McCarthy, considered a competent force and White House ally on Capitol Hill, may also be the “front-runner” for the chief of staff job if Trump ultimately decides to ditch Kelly, another source said.
However, McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday no one in the White House had contacted him about the position.
“Trump likes him now, though he didn’t initially; he wasn’t happy with the way leadership handled the healthcare bill,” the source said of McCarthy. “But because Kevin did such a good job on the tax bill, the president has embraced him.”
