TJ Ducklo, a White House press aide, was suspended from his job on Friday after he reportedly threatened and made disparaging comments to a reporter in an effort to stop the publication of a story about him.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said that Ducklo had been placed on one-week suspension without pay, and had apologized to the reporter for the “heated conversation about his personal life.”
Ducklo is dating Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond, and reportedly made threats over the phone to Politico’s Tara Palmeri, who was pursuing a story about their relationship and the ethical concerns raised by a reporter covering President Joe Biden’s administration dating one of his staffers.
Ducklo threatened Palmeri, saying “I will destroy you,” according to Vanity Fair, which also reported that Ducklo said he would ruin her reputation if she published the story. He also reportedly accused her of being “jealous” that another man previously “wanted to fuck” McCammond “and not you,” and also that Palmeri was “jealous” of Ducklo and McCammond’s relationship.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
Axios said in a statement that after McCammond disclosed her relationship with Ducklo in November, she was reassigned to cover progressives and Vice President Kamala Harris. Axios declined to respond to HuffPost’s question about its decision to keep McCammond on a beat covering a member of the Biden administration.
Last month, Biden said anyone who treated colleagues with disrespect or talked down to someone would be fired “on the spot.”
When Psaki was asked in a press conference on Friday why Ducklo was not fired after making “such sexist comments,” Psaki said she takes the situation “very seriously” and noted, “I am a woman.”
Psaki defended the decision to suspend Ducklo, saying he’d apologized to Palmeri, adding that the piece was about his “personal life” and not “an issue related to the White House.”
However, ethical concerns about a Biden official dating a reporter covering the Biden administration are, in fact, “an issue related to the White House.”
The reporter continued pressing, noting that Ducklo — who is now banned from working with Politico in the future — would still be working with other female reporters. Psaki said the kinds of remarks Ducklo made were “not going to be tolerated.”
When asked by another reporter about Biden saying that staff who disrespected others would be “fired on the spot,” Psaki defended the decision to suspend Ducklo as “an important step,” noting she hadn’t spoken to the president about it.
Another reporter noted that it wasn’t even until Vanity Fair’s piece made Ducklo’s comments public that he was suspended, to which Psaki said they had dealt with it previously by speaking with Politico “in a private manner.”
Shortly thereafter, Politico’s Editor-in-Chief Matt Kaminski and Editor Carrie Budoff Brown said in a statement that they had raised “concerns about the incident directly with the White House at the time.”
They continued: “No journalist at POLITICO—or any other publication or network—should ever be subjected to such unfounded personal attacks while doing their job.”