We met the Trump admin official who had to resign over smoking pot

WASHINGTON — When George David Banks went to work in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex Tuesday morning, he wasn’t thinking about his security clearance. He was thinking about the climate policy that he’d been shaping for the Trump administration since February of 2017.

By the end of the day, his email had been shut off and a member of the White House counsel’s office was explaining that his time in the administration had come to an end — because he had disclosed on a security form that he’d “smoked a little pot” between 2010 and 2013.

NBC reported well over 100 current White House staffers have been working under interim security clearances, and Banks was one of them. On Tuesday, he was told he couldn’t get permanent clearance because of past drug use, and so Banks, nearing 50, was fired. He said he was also encouraged to apply for another job in the Trump White House that doesn’t require security clearance.

His dismissal came as the White House attempts to vet the backgrounds of staffers in the wake of the scandal surrounding former Staff Secretary Rob Porter. Porter resigned last week after allegations surfaced that he’d physically abused two former wives. Banks decided to discuss his situation with VICE News because he doesn’t want anyone to associate the reason for his departure with Porters’.

“Because of the narrative out there and the domestic abuse, this is why I'm here,” he said in an interview at the VICE News DC Bureau Thursday. “Or at least one of the reasons why I'm here is I want to make sure that you know people don't think that I was you know a domestic abuser or whatever.”

Banks is a climate change apostate in the Trump administration. His job title was special assistant to the president for international energy and environmental policy and in that capacity he worked on a lot of climate issues. He pushed President Trump to stay in the Paris Agreement — though he said he advocated changing the emissions targets agreed to in the Obama administration — and he fondly recalls past eras when Republicans in Congress favored carbon reduction legislation. He’s been a part of the Republican climate conversation for years, including in the Bush administration where he was a climate adviser. But his career has not been spent in the mainstream of climate change policy — he also worked for one of the most prominent climate change deniers in history, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe.

Many of these jobs required a top security clearance. Banks said he had Top Secret clearance with SCI access, one of the highest clearance levels available. People with Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance are allowed to view material so secret it can only be viewed in secure rooms. Banks had that clearance at the CIA and in the Bush administration but it lapsed after he left government.

With his CIA security clearance lapsed, and in a new private sector life, Banks decided to take the opportunity to loosen up.

“Off and on between 2010 and 2013 — it's not like I kept a log right? ‘On Jan. 1, I smoked pot,’” he joked. “You know the bad thing about it was I never got high off of it and I don't if it’s just because I don't know how to smoke. But so that’s part of the irony here…I've had friends who say you just don't know what you're doing.”

After a long career in government, it seemed like a time to try something he’d been unable to do as as a high-level government employee with strict security clearance.

“I worked for CIA from and State Department and then the Bush White House from 1995 until early 2009 and I had a security clearance I wasn't going to break the rules right and try pot,” he said. “And all my friends tell me how great pot is. ‘Got to try it, got to try it.’ And so when I when I left government I said, you know, I'll try it. So there you go. And then when I went to the Hill I didn't try it right. Because again I'm with you I'm working for the federal government. But anyway so there you go.”

The pot smoking wasn’t Banks’s only brush with the wrong side of the law during his stint in the private sector. There was also an arrest for a DUI in northern Virginia in 2012 that Banks said resulted in an acquittal and the state repaying his court costs. Banks said he revealed that to FBI investigators performing his clearance check but said that it didn’t come up in follow-up questions or in the Tuesday afternoon meeting where he was fired.

The meeting included a staffer from the White House counsel’s office, the National Security Council and the White House personnel office. Banks said he wasn’t given any written explanation for why he didn’t get security clearance. His email was turned off during the course of the meeting, and he was sent home. On Thursday he returned his unclassified government laptop to the White House in an exchange that took place just outside the White House gates on Pennsylvania Ave.

When he arrived to be interviewed by VICE News, Banks wearing in a suit with a lining printed with skulls and skull-and-crossbones pirate-themed cufflinks. But he didn’t go rogue on the administration he served and fired him when asked if he was treated fairly.

“You can never take a clearance process for granted,” he said. “It took a long time and then it came back it came up with the result. Now I guess my only question is you know if that disqualified me now why wouldn't it have disqualified me when I submitted it back in February?.”

Banks also pushed back on criticisms that this White House doesn’t know how to handle secrets. That’s been raised since the Porter scandal and the emergence of stories about top aides like Jared Kushner looking at classified material despite still being unable to get beyond an interim clearance.

“I guess I would say that it's unfair because I mean if you if you look at previous administrations you had a lot of people who were there with interim clearances.,” he said “I don't know how long the process it takes for each individual or how long how long those people only had interim clearances because you have you have such a revolving door right for people,” he said.

Asked if more people were going to be shown the door as the Trump administration deals with the fallout from the Porter scandal, which has opened up a conversation about the number of people serving with interim security clearances, Porter wouldn’t speculate.

“I hope I'm the only one,” he said.

Cover image: George David Banks (VICE News)