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A Trump official couldn’t get security clearance because he smoked pot 5 years ago

George David Banks says he’d admitted to using marijuana as part of his screening.

A top Trump adviser on climate and energy policy resigned Tuesday after reportedly being told he wouldn’t get permanent security clearance because he smoked pot in 2013.

“They’ve had this information since February [or] March of last year. If they knew that that would disqualify me then, why didn’t they just save me the year?” said George David Banks, the third Trump official to resign over clearance issues after the White House reportedly told him he wouldn’t be granted security clearance.

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He told VICE News that he’d admitted to using marijuana in 2013 as part of the screening process in early 2017. He claims that’s the reason he was given for not being granted permanent clearance.

Clearances for White House brass have come under scrutiny amid ongoing fallout from the White House’s handling of former staff secretary Rob Porter. Reports out last week revealed Porter’s alleged sexual assault of his two ex-wives and a girlfriend, which the Trump administration should have found out about in the course of his screening for a security clearance. Porter resigned.

About 35 people in the White House are believed to be working in the administration without permanent security clearances. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a foreign policy adviser to the president, is among them.

Shortly after Porter resigned, one of Trump’s speechwriters, David Sorensen, resigned as the Washington Post was reporting a story about his punching his ex-wife, putting a cigarette out on her hand, and running over her foot with his car.

An unnamed former Obama administration official who worked on security clearances told Politico that clearances were usually not withheld over drug use alone. Only lying about the drug use would have put the clearance at risk, the source said.

“Smoking marijuana can absolutely be grounds for being denied a security clearance. Typically I would not expect too much pushback for a single use of marijuana four to five years earlier, assuming what is being publicly reported is accurate,” Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in national security and represents people going through the clearance process, told VICE News via email.

Banks was the administration’s leading expert on the Paris climate accord, instrumental in orchestrating the U.S.’s withdrawal from the landmark deal, though he says he was personally opposed to withdrawing.

He represented the U.S. at the United Nations climate conference in November and faced protesters for his comments on coal. “The idea that the world can meet ambitious mitigation goals, support development in poor countries the way we should, and ensure energy access by only deploying solar and wind, is naive,” Banks told other panel members there, according to Quartz. “The U.S. is not alone in its acknowledgment that clean, more efficient fossil fuels have to play in climate mitigation.” Protesters sang anti-coal songs at him.