Ddozens of young White House employees have been suspended, asked to resign or placed in a remote work program due to previous marijuana use, frustrating employees who were dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s initial indications that recreational cannabis use would not be immediately disqualified by potential staff, according to three people familiar with the situation.
The policy has even affected employees whose marijuana use was exclusive to one of the 14 states — and the District of Columbia — where cannabis is legal. Sources familiar with the matter, he also said several young officials were released on bail or canned because they revealed previous marijuana use in an official document they filled out as part of the lengthy fund review to obtain a place in the White House of Biden.
In some cases, employees received informal information from transition seniors before formally joining the administration that they would likely overlook some past marijuana use, and then ask them to resign.
“There were individual calls with affected staff, rather with former staff,” a former White House staff member affected by the policy told The Daily Beast. “I was asked to resign.”
“Nothing has ever been explained” to the calls, they added, led by White House director of administration and administration Anne Filipic. “Policies were never explained, the threshold of what was excusable and what was inexcusable was never explained.”
In February, NBC News reported that the White House intended — for some candidates — to waive the requirement that all possible nominees for the president’s executive office could obtain a “top secret” authorization. Rules about past marijuana use and eligibility for liquidation vary, depending on the agency: for the FBI, an applicant has not been able to use marijuana in the past three years; in the NSA, it’s just one. The White House, however, largely makes its own shots, and officials at the time told NBC News that as long as past use was “limited” and the candidate did not follow a position that required a security clearance, past use could be excused.
Asked about the policy and its effect on the administration staff, a White House spokesman discussed the number of staff affected, but said the Biden administration is “committed to bringing the best people into government, especially young people whose commitment to public service can deepen these positions “, and noted that the White House’s approach to previous marijuana use is much more flexible than previous administrations.
“White House policy will maintain the highest absolute standards of service to the government the president expects from his administration, recognizing the reality that state and local marijuana laws have changed significantly across the country in recent years.” added the spokesman. “This decision was made after intense consultation with professional security officials and will effectively protect our national security while modernizing policies to ensure that talented applicants and other qualifiers with limited marijuana use do not have forbidden to attend to the American people “.
A candidate’s personal drug history, other than past conviction, is largely based on the honor system, as well as additional interviews with family and friends of the FBI, although they lie on the SF-form. 86 of 136 pages is a felony and is effectively prohibits a candidate from ever working for a federal agency. Over the years, some rules have been relaxed or eliminated altogether (the existence of nude photos of a candidate is no longer automatically disqualifying, for example).
Some of these layoffs, parolees, and remote work appointments could potentially have been the result of inconsistencies that occurred during the background check process, in which a staff member may have, for example, misjudged the last time he used marijuana. The effect of the policy, however, would be the same: the Biden White House would punish several officials for violating cannabis consumption thresholds that future staff members did not know about.
Prior drug use can cause problems in obtaining a safety clearance. Although federal government practices vary, agencies can generally consider type, frequency, and timeliness. the use of drugs as mitigating factors when granting an authorization.
The Biden administration has tried to modernize the White House personnel policy in relation to past marijuana use, which has disproportionately affected designated youth and those in states where marijuana has been decriminalized or legalized. (Marijuana, of course, remains illegal in the eyes of the federal government.) The number of instances of marijuana use in the past has increased since the Trump and Obama administrations — a reflection of the widespread drug use — and the White House approved limited exemptions for candidates whose positions do not require safety clearance. These employees, like all White House employees, must commit to not consuming marijuana while serving the federal government and must undergo random drug testing.
The president, however, remains the final authority over who can get a permit and the chief executive can overturn the agencies’ judgments on eligibility, as President Donald Trump did when he granted his son-in-law Jared Kushner a authorization of high-secret objections from the intelligence community and its own council.
“It seems absurd to me that, in 2021, marijuana use will continue to be part of a security background check,” said Tommy Vietor, a 2008 Obama team veteran who later worked as a Council spokesman of National Security. “For me, marijuana use is completely irrelevant when trying to decide whether to entrust a person with national security information.”
In previous administrations, White House staff have also rejected their applications or jobs that had started abruptly due to marijuana use. In the early days of the Trump era, several people (some mid-level, some higher-level) had jobs they had already accepted by pulling on the White House brass after doing urine tests that showed signs of recent marijuana use, according to one person. with knowledge of the subject.
Marijuana policy has led to the appointment of even senior White House officials in previous administrations. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser to the White House, wrote in his memoirs that his temporary security permit was initially denied due to past marijuana use. Alyssa Mastromonaco, who served as deputy chief of staff for the Obama administration’s operations and self-described as “love for the hook,” wrote to Vice in 2017 that after filling her SF-86 , “he went home and washed all the pot he had kept in the underwear drawer.”
In the end, Mastromonaco was allowed to join the administration, he wrote, “but I was given random tests almost once a month for the first year and regularly afterwards.”
But aspiring Biden administration staff whose jobs were derailed by an opaque system now feel their veracity has been used against them.
“It is aimed exclusively at younger staff and staff who came from states where it was legal,” the former staff said.