After discovering a Grindr account, a gay staffer for former First Lady Melania Trump was allegedly fired, according to a former White House aide.
Stephanie Grisham, who did not name the staffer, wrote a memoir about her time serving as former President Donald Trump’s press secretary. According to her, one of her closest friends in the White House was being fired due to an “issue with his security clearance” despite working for Trump for more than three years, Metro Weekly reported.
The fired gay staffer was reportedly “walked out of the White House by a woman from Human Resources, followed by an armed Secret Service agent, and not given a second thought,” according to the book, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw in the Trump White House.” She later found out it was because he had used Grindr, a gay-dating app.
“Whoever determined security clearances had come across his Grindr account and decided that some of the stuff on it would be ‘personally embarrassing’ to Mrs. Trump,” Grisham wrote.
In her book, Grisham criticizes former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly for her friend’s termination, writing that Kelly “oversaw some activities that were frankly shitty” when he fired or reassigned several staffers as part of a shake-up over issues with some staffers’ security clearances.
This came after the revelation that former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter had been granted clearance despite having been accused of allegedly physically abusing two of his ex-wives, according to CNN.
Although she doesn’t have definitive proof, Grisham has suggested in the book that Kelly was the one who made the decision to fire the staffer, according to Business Insider.
“To this day, I don’t know if the decision went all the way up to General Kelly, although he was the type of guy who liked top-to-bottom control, so it was certainly possible,” Grisham wrote. “I do know that one of Kelly’s deputies was well aware of what had happened and supported the decision, something that enraged me on many levels.”
Grisham stopped being friendly with Kelly and his team in the White House, believing their decision to be biased, Metro Weekly reported. She also criticized Melania for not stepping in to stop the termination, despite being angry by the firing.
Grisham called Melania Trump’s inaction as part of the “transactional nature of the Trump White House,” Metro Weekly reported.
“If the person had truly been removed solely because he was gay and had a lively Grindr account, that was wrong. This was a White House filled with adulterers,” Grisham wrote in the book. “I had a DUI, and they let me stay.”
