Gay Melania Trump Staffer Allegedly Fired Over Grindr Account

During the Trump administration, the White House fired a gay staffer for Melania Trump after Secret Service discovered his Grindr account, according to former White House Deputy Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham's tell-all memoir I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw in the Trump White House.

Grisham wrote in her book that Melania Trump's chief of staff Lindsay Reynolds told her in 2018 that one of Grisham's closest friends in the administration was fired because of a security clearance issue, reportedInsider. The fired staffer had worked for former President Donald Trump for over three years.

The section of the book where the incident is discussed is a part of a larger discussion about the actions of former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Kelly had revamped the security clearance process, firing or reassigning several staffers afterward. Grisham wrote in her book that Kelly "oversaw some activities that were frankly shitty."

Grisham, who doesn't name the fired staffers, wrote that one was "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."

Only later did she find out the firing was connected to his use of the hook-up app Grindr.

"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," she wrote.

Grisham added that it could have been John Kelly who decided to fire him because he was a "control freak," reported 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."

The firing made Grisham uncomfortable: "I just couldn't get over that level of bias."

She added in her book that Melania Trump could have stepped in to prevent the man from being fired.

"If she had really wanted a staff member back on her team, if she had been truly outraged, she could have done something," she explained. "She didn't."

Grisham quit the White House in the wake of the January 6, 2020 insurrection. She'd worked Trump since 2015.

"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. "I had a DUI, and they let me stay."