President Donald Trump’s personal assistant was fired and abruptly escorted out of the White House on Monday due to unspecified security clearance issues, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The fired aide was John McEntee, one of the longest-serving and closest aides to Trump, dating back to the early days of the campaign.
The Journal reported that McEntee, 27, was relatively unknown publicly but was always by Trump’s side and responsible for tasks as minute as making sure the president had markers for autographs and adjusting White House clocks for daylight-saving time.
McEntee was a former quarterback (and trick shot specialist) at the University of Connecticut, and worked as a production assistant for Fox News before joining the Trump campaign.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would not elaborate on the reasons for McEntee’s removal.
“We don’t comment on personnel issues,” Sanders said.
Unnamed sources told the Journal that McEntee told colleagues that an “issue in his background” led to the dismissal.
Regardless of the issues that may have led to McEntee losing his White House post, it doesn’t appear to have harmed his relationship with Trump.
The Trump campaign announced Tuesday that McEntee would be a senior adviser for campaign operations for the 2020 re-election effort.
