WASHINGTON — A White House national-security aide secretly posted nasty Twitter messages for two years mocking top administration aides before being caught and fired last week.
Jofi Joseph, 40, used his anonymous account @NatSecWonk to call senior advisor to President Obama Valerie Jarrett a “vacuous cipher,” and to ridicule Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — even though Joseph was reportedly close to landing a job at the Pentagon.
In his official capacity, Joseph headed up arms-control issues on the president’s National Security Council, a sensitive post where he helped develop policy on Iran’s nuclear program. But under his cloaked identity on Twitter, Joseph excoriated some of Obama’s closest allies and advisors, often ridiculing their physical appearance, and ripping key players as sellouts and stooges.
During Hagel’s contentious Senate confirmation hearing, Joseph tweeted: “I liked how Women’s Wear Daily suggested new SecDef Hagel get something for his puffy eyes. The man looks like f—ing sadsack Aeyore [sic]!”
Joseph faulted Secretary of State John Kerry for installing former aides with “ZERO foreign policy experience” to top jobs at State.
Turning to UN Ambassador Samantha Power, Joseph vented this fall: “It’s pathetic how @AmbassadorPower keeps tweeting on Syria when her own president refuses to do anything about it. You’ve sold out, Sam.”
Joseph also criticized the administration’s handling of the attack on the US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, while blasting the “white trash” family of Sarah Palin.
Multiple tweets took provocative, personal swipes at political figures. One tweet commented on “two blondes” flanking Chelsea Clinton at an event with the former first daughter, then continued: “And is it just me, or has she put on some weight?”
Unloading on former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, he tweeted that Liz Cheney is “what happens when rank nepotism meets sheer stupidity” and called her “like 30 pounds overweight.”
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the matter, Foreign Policy magazine reported, though the agency wouldn’t officially confirm it.
A White House official would say only that Joseph “no longer works at the White House.”
No one answered the door Wednesday at Joseph’s home on a leafy street in suburban Virginia, but he earlier e-mailed his apologies to Politico.
“What started out as an intended parody account of DC culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments. I bear complete responsibility for this affair, and I sincerely apologize to everyone I insulted,” he said.