Trump State Department employee had been accused of sexual assault
A Trump political appointee who has been accused of sexual assault is now working at the State Department.
Steven Munoz, who graduated from The Citadel in South Carolina in 2011, has been at the State Department since late January. He is now the Assistant Chief of Visits in the Office of the Chief of Protocol. While a student at The Citadel, Munoz was accused by five underclassmen of sexual assault, according to ProPublica. He did not face legal charges.
The State Department will not comment on the status of his security clearance but acknowledges that every employee must go through a "background investigation" when their application for a security clearance is submitted.
"The process to receive or maintain a security clearance includes consideration of many aspects of an individual's life to determine whether that individual can be trusted with access to classified information," a State Department official wrote. Both personal and professional history matters in this review, and they look for qualities such as "loyalty, strength of character, trustworthiness, honesty, and reliability."
The reports of Munoz's sexual assault are not new. Munoz worked for Rick Santorum's presidential campaign in 2012. When the allegations came out, Munoz's lawyer dismissed them as politically motivated.
In 2014, The Citadel concluded that the assaults occurred after it conducted an investigation, which included interviewing complainants and witnesses.
Charges against Munoz came after The Citadel had been scrutinized for a number of staff sexual assault cases and this timing caused an overreaction, Munoz's lawyer Andrew Savage said. "There was boorish behavior at The Citadel, and clearly he was involved in that," Savage says. But he asserts that there was "no sexual behavior" that Munoz was a part of.
Munoz's lawyer has not been contacted by the U.S. government as part of Munoz's vetting process.