You ever know something is wrong before you actually know why something is wrong? Like you can't prove a damn thing yet. You don't even know what you're looking for. But you just know something doesn't smell right.
Well Porch Family… I smell a rat. And that rat sits 10 feet away from the President of the United States. That's right I am talking about none other than Natalie Harp.
Because apparently Natalie spent more than a year flat out refusing to apply for the routine security clearance West Wing staff normally get. And get this, she wasn’t asked just once. They asked her more than once and she still said no.
Like who else on Earth would get away with some bullshit like this?
Seriously.
Imagine somebody telling you hey, you’re gonna be sitting next to the President of the United States all damn day so we’re gonna need you to fill out the paperwork for your security clearance and you just go…
Nah.
And then you show up for work the next morning.
What the actual hell?
And let’s not forget she’s already right there beside Donald while all this is going on. We’re talking about somebody sitting in the Oval Office, following him into meetings and even having access to him over in the residence.
One national security official said being that damn close potentially put her around some of the most sensitive information surrounding the President. So somebody explain to me how the hell you can have THAT kind of access, get told you need to go through the security clearance process, say no and apparently just keep showing up?
And guess what? It wasn’t okay with everybody because White House counsel and security people were concerned about it too. They even tried putting some boundaries around how much access she had, but the big guy needed his human binkie right there. And apparently he needed her there badly enough that Donald himself eventually got involved and Natalie finally did the damn paperwork. She has a clearance now. Fine. But that still doesn’t answer the question that’s bothering me. Why the hell didn’t she want one before?
And get this, foreign leaders have found the Donald hack. Apparently they figured out that if you can’t get to Donald, try Natalie. CNN political analyst and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says Natalie has become a channel outsiders use to bypass the existing systems for getting to him and yeah, that includes foreign leaders.
Bypass? What the heck does that mean? Bypass who? Why? And how did foreign leaders KNOW Natalie was the person to go through? I don't know.
But apparently Natalie isn't just passing messages either. People inside the administration have said she filters a lot of what Donald sees every day. And wait for it… some of the stuff she puts in front of him hasn't even been vetted. What? I have more questions. Like how are we bypassing the normal systems to get to the President and then putting information in front of him that hasn't been vetted? And why is the person doing that the same person who spent more than a year saying no to the security clearance?
Maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation. I haven’t found it. So now I’m reading about security clearances because apparently I don’t have anything better to do with my life. And one of the things they ask about is foreign contacts. Why? Because they want to know if somebody outside this country has influence over you or if there’s something in your life they could use as leverage.
And I read that and went…
Well I'll be damned.
Because didn’t I JUST find out foreign leaders already know Natalie is a way to get to Donald?
And this made me ask the same question all over again. Why didn't she want the clearance?
Because I still don't have an answer for that.
But I did find one juicy little piece of gossip. Her brother says Natalie was obsessed with George W. Bush when she was in high school. So apparently our girl has been honing those presidential letter-writing skills for decades because she wrote W letters too. Only W didn’t write back.
So apparently Natalie getting incredibly attached to a president didn’t start with the Man in Charge. And I’m sorry but that does make this a little funnier because maybe Donald isn’t quite as special as he thinks he is.
Natalie’s presidential letter-writing escapades go back decades. Donald might just be the first one to let her move in.
Then I get into her family. Now I don’t know if y’all know this, but her dad died by suicide in 2020. There was no scandal around his death, at least not one I could find. What I DID find was something her brother said that immediately made me question her character.
So according to him, after their dad killed himself, Natalie and their mother wanted to change the story of how he died. They wanted everybody told he died in his sleep.
Ummm…
Why? I don't understand that. If you don't want people knowing your father died by suicide then don't tell them. Say it's private. Tell everyone you're not talking about the details of his passing. Tell them to mind their own damn business. But telling folks he died in his sleep when he didn't. That's not keeping something private. That's telling people something happened that didn't happen. And that's messed up.
Maybe they were ashamed. They did come from the evangelical world, so perhaps telling people he died in his sleep felt like protecting him somehow. I don’t know. Grief does strange things to people. But her brother wasn’t willing to change what happened. He told the family their dad died by suicide, and apparently that helped blow the family apart.
And that tells me something about Natalie. It tells me that at least once in her life, when something terrible happened, she was apparently willing to give people a different version of the truth. Maybe that’s the only time. I don’t know. But when the same woman is now reportedly filtering information for the President of the United States, I sure as hell wanna know.
And somewhere around her dad dying, Donald makes Natalie some kind of promise. We still don’t know what the hell he promised her, but her brother thinks Donald may have become some kind of father figure in her life. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he isn’t. But I’m looking at this girl writing letters to George Bush in high school, then she loses her dad and somewhere in that grief Donald makes her a promise, and somehow we end up here with Natalie practically living beside another president.
And I mean practically. Because there are reports of Natalie sleeping in maids' rooms and women's locker rooms at Donald's properties just so she could stay close to him. Why would anybody do that? At some point don't you want to go home? Sleep in your own bed? Have one damn day where you don't have to look at Donald Trump? Apparently Natalie doesn't.
And Donald seems to love that. Haberman says he’s told people the other aides will eventually leave him to go make money, but Natalie won’t. He actually believes she loves him as much as his own family does. Which, from what I’ve seen, isn’t exactly setting the bar in the stratosphere. I mean hell, Melania is barely ever at the White House. But maybe Natalie really does love him. The Bush thing actually makes me think she might. Maybe Natalie Harp really is this devoted to Donald Trump.
And if she is, nobody is gonna convince her to screw Donald over. That would be a waste of time. But what if somebody gave her something she thought would help him? Would she believe it enough to put it in front of him? I don’t know. But apparently that’s already part of what Natalie does and, like I said before, some of what she puts in front of Donald reportedly hasn’t even been vetted.
So now I’m thinking about the foreign leaders again because they already know Natalie is a straight road to Donald. What do they know about her? Hell, look at everything we just uncovered between George Bush, her dad and this almost nonstop need to stay beside Donald while he apparently believes she’s the one person who will never leave him. None of this stuff is hidden.
And maybe nobody has ever tried to do anything with any of it. I don't know. But if somebody wanted Donald to see something and they knew Natalie could put it in front of him, why would they need Natalie to turn against Donald? Wouldn't it be easier if she thought she was helping him?
And that scenario bothers me the most because Natalie wouldn't even have to know somebody was using her. If she believed whatever landed in her hands was something Donald genuinely needed, taking it straight to him could feel like nothing more than doing her job.
And now I want names because “foreign leaders” is doing a whole lot of work here and somehow nobody is telling us WHICH foreign leaders. Haberman says they use Natalie when they can't reach Donald another way, and the New York Times says Natalie actually texts with world leaders on Donald's behalf. They also described her as a “one-woman conduit of information” operating outside the usual chain of command.
Excuse me?
Which countries have figured out Natalie is a straight road into the Oval Office? Because there's a hell of a difference between some friendly government calling Natalie because they can't get Donald on the phone and somebody from a country actively trying to influence the United States figuring out they can skip right over the people who would normally be standing between them and the President.
And right now nobody has given us those names. I want them. And I especially want to know whether any of those foreign leaders knew Natalie had spent more than a year refusing the routine security clearance while they were using her to bypass the normal chain of command.
Because after everything I found tonight, I keep coming back to the same damn place.
Do I have evidence Natalie Harp is an intelligence asset? No. Do I suspect she could be? Yeah. I do.
She could be knowingly involved in something, or her devotion to Donald could be exactly what somebody figured out how to use without her ever realizing it. I don’t know.
But foreign leaders found the side door to the President of the United States.
And somehow Natalie Harp was standing in it.
I smell a rat.
And I’m not done looking.
Before you go, I want to tell you something because tonight is a pretty damn good example of what happens around here before I ever hit publish.
I started with one question about Natalie Harp’s security clearance.
That turned into foreign leaders using her to get to Donald, which somehow ended with me at 2 a.m. reading the actual SF-86, digging through interviews with her brother and comparing CNN transcripts with reporting from The New York Times, The Guardian, MS NOW, People, The Independent and God knows what else.
That’s how these write-ups happen.
I don’t know where I’m going when I start looking. Tonight I actually talked myself out of what I thought more than once before ending up somewhere I sure as hell wasn’t expecting.
And underneath this write-up you’ll find the receipts for all of it.
Read them.
Don’t believe something because I said it. See what the reporting actually says and decide what YOU think.
Because doing this the way I do it takes time.
Sometimes a lot of it.
And here’s the part most people probably don’t realize.
Facebook is the ONLY one of those platforms paying me for video views right now, and that only recently started.
TikTok can give one of my videos thousands of views and I make nothing from those views. Same thing on Instagram. Same thing on YouTube.
So you can watch Southern Punk all day long on those platforms, but unless somebody chooses to subscribe or directly support the Porch, those views don’t pay for the hours that went into figuring out why the hell somebody sitting that close to the President of the United States spent more than a year refusing to apply for a routine security clearance.
That’s why subscriptions matter so much around here.
If you subscribe to Southern Punk on Substack, you’re supporting the writing and all the digging that goes into it.
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That’s really what it comes down to.
Southern Punk is my job now, and subscriptions are what give me the time to keep doing it this way.
Independent.
No corporation sitting behind me deciding what I can talk about. Nobody telling me a rabbit hole isn’t worth following because it won’t generate enough clicks.
Just me seeing something that makes me go, “Wait a damn minute,” and having enough time to actually find out why.
And this week paid subscribers are getting something new.
Southern Punk Uncensored.
Lord, I’ve been waiting for this one.
Because I spend way too much time wondering what Facebook is going to flag or what perfectly normal word TikTok has decided it hates today.
Not there.
I’m taking the filter off.
No watering something down because one of the platforms might throw a fit. I’m going to say what I actually want to say.
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If you’ve been here for a while and you’ve thought about becoming a paid subscriber, and you’re able to do it, I’d love to have you.
Really.
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Because every bit of it gives me more time to see something that makes me go, “Wait a damn minute,” stop what I’m doing and start digging.
Sometimes I find something important.
Sometimes I find something that pisses me off.
And apparently sometimes I start with a security clearance and end the night wondering whether somebody found a side door to the President of the United States.
You really never know what the hell is gonna come through that door around here.
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I’ll be honest...
I thought I was done with Natalie Harp for the day.
I was not.
Because once I started wondering why somebody sitting that damn close to the President of the United States spent more than a year refusing to apply for the routine security clearance West Wing staff normally get, there went the rest of my night.
One question led to another.
Why didn't she want the clearance?
How much access did she have without it?
Then I find out foreign leaders have figured out Natalie is a way around the normal channels to Donald and suddenly I'm reading the actual federal security-clearance paperwork at an ungodly hour because apparently this is what I do with my life now.
And somewhere along the way I ended up with George W. Bush, her estranged brother, her father's suicide, a family story about wanting people told he died in his sleep, Donald apparently believing Natalie will never leave him and reports that this woman has slept in maids' rooms and women's locker rooms just to stay close to him.
Y'all.
I went looking for a rat and found one hell of a rabbit hole.
And because I make a pretty serious distinction in this write-up between what has actually been reported, what people close to Natalie have alleged and what I personally suspect after reading all of it, I want y'all to have the receipts sitting right here.
Read the reporting.
Check what I told you.
Then make up your own damn mind.
The Security Clearance & Just How Much Access Natalie Had
The Guardian | White House faces questions over security clearance for top Trump aide Natalie Harp
MS NOW | Trump aide Natalie Harp worked at the White House without security clearance for a year
Inside the Oval Office & Outside the Normal Chain of Command
The New York Times | ‘With All My Heart, Natalie.’ Trump’s Most Devoted Aide Emerges
Archived New York Times | ‘With All My Heart, Natalie.’ Trump’s Most Devoted Aide Emerges
The New York Times | Devoted Aide Who Keeps Good News Flowing Will Follow Trump to the White House
Foreign Leaders Figuring Out the Natalie Route
CNN | The Situation Room — Maggie Haberman on Natalie Harp, foreign leaders and bypassing existing systems
People | Foreign Leaders Text Natalie Harp If They Can’t Get Ahold of Donald Trump, Report Claims
What the Government Actually Asks During a Security Investigation
U.S. Office of Personnel Management | Questionnaire for National Security Positions — Standard Form 86
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency | Common SF-86 Errors and Mistakes
Natalie Before Donald — The George W. Bush Letters
Her Father's Death, the Family Rupture & Her Brother's Account
The Independent | Brother of Trump aide Natalie Harp blasts her ‘very unhealthy’ relationship with president after report of adoring notes
Donald as a Possible Father Figure
The Daily Beast | Twisted Truth About Trump and Blonde Companion, 34, Exposed
Just How Far Natalie Reportedly Goes to Stay Close
Cockatoo | Why Trump Inner Circle Fears Blonde Companion, 34 | Inside Trump's Head
The Letters, the Secret Service & the Relationship Everyone Is Talking About
CNN via KQ2 | ‘My Guardian and Protector’: Natalie Harp letters express her devotion to Trump
HuffPost | Maggie Haberman Says Secret Service ‘Alarmed’ Over Natalie Harp Letters To Trump
And one last thing because this part matters.
I did not find evidence proving Natalie Harp is an intelligence asset.
That's my suspicion after looking at all this reporting.
Those are two very different things.
The reporting gives us the clearance problem, her extraordinary access to Donald, the information she reportedly filters for him and the fact that foreign leaders have apparently figured out Natalie is a way around the normal channels to the President.
What that ultimately means?
That's the part we don't know yet.
Read the reporting.
Check the receipts.
Follow the rat.
Then make up your own mind.
— Southern Punk
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