Rob Porter’s ex-wife Jennifer Willoughby is pushing back against White House chief of staff John Kelly’s statement that he initially stood by his aide because he thought he was only accused of ’emotional abuse.’
‘Emotional and psychological abuse is abuse!” she said in a statement after Kelly spoke about the Porter scandal again.
Kelly spoke at length about the timeline of his involvement in the situation involving the former White House staff secretary who resigned after allegations of spousal abuse.
Kelly insisted Friday that he did not know the full scope of information about Porter on Feb. 6, when DailyMail.com briefed the White House on the story it was about to publish about it. He said he was under the impression it dealt only with ’emotional abuse.’
‘I don’t know what information. I don’t know if there was anything in there about messy divorces or whatever, but we had received some information,’ Kelly told reporters.
ABUSE IS ABUSE: Jennifer Willoughby is pushing back against White House chief of staff John Kelly after his statement that he stood by Rob Porter thinking he was only charged with ’emotional abuse’
Jennifer Willoughby, whose accusations were detailed in the original DailyMail story, shot back in a statement to CNN.
“My only comment is the sadness I felt when Kelly defended his first statement of defense of Rob saying they thought it was ‘only emotional abuse,’” Willoughby said.
‘He changed the statement after realizing it was ‘physical abuse.’ That is insulting to anyone suffering an abusive situation now. Emotional and psychological abuse is abuse!” she wrote.
Kelly’s statement is also at odds with the sequence of events that unfolded on Tuesday Feb. 6, when a DailyMail.com reporter told White House press staff in press secretary Sarah Sanders’ office about Willoughby’s detailed claims, including physical and emotional abuse – and a restraining order she had obtained against Porter.
Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly acknowledged on Friday that the FBI had briefed the White House about accused domestic abuser Rob Porter, who served as Trump’s staff secretary for more than a year – but denied knowing the specifics; sources tell DailyMail.com that he was briefed personally last November
Additionally, sources have told DailyMail.com that Kelly got an FBI briefing in November about information the FBI had collected in their background check investigation of Porter, telling him the aide’s security clearance would be denied because his past spousal abuse made him a blackmail risk.
Kelly said in his account of the timeline: ‘We put out a statement of support for him and an hour later now find out there’s a second report — still not in the press, still no pictures — just an inquiry by someone probably in this room that said ‘Hey, his first wife of 15 years ago says that there was physical abuse,’ ” Kelly said.
Porter, shown with now-former girlfriend and outgoing White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, was forced out of his sensitive job after DailyMail.com published his ex-wives damning accounts of physical abuse
Jennifer Willoughby, Porter’s second ex-wife, said her then-husband yanked her, naked, from a shower – an accusation DailyMail.com relayed to the White House; Kelly said Friday that her claim only encompassed ’emotional’ abuse and a ‘messy divorce’
Colbie Holderness, Porter’s first wife, (left) told DailyMail.com that he repeatedly punched and choked her; DailyMail.com told the White House about this photo on the morning of February 7, but Kelly claimed Friday that he knew about it a day earlier – and yet still allowed a glowing statement about Porter to be read to the press under his name
Overnight, the Intercept published a photo of Porter’s first ex-wife, Colbie Holderness, featuring a black eye she says she got from Porter during a vacation in Italy.
Early in the morning of February 7, at 1.53 a.m., The Intercept tweeted photographs of Holderness, showing her with a black eye, taken during a vacation in Italy when the couple were married and said it planned to publish a story alleging domestic abuse later in the day.
Kelly’s glowing statement defending Porter, issued at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday night, was still in effect the following afternoon when Press Secretary Sarah Sanders read it aloud from the briefing room podium before confirming Porter’s resignation publicly.
‘I have absolutely nothing to even consider resigning over,’ Kelly said.