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Subscribe to RSSJill Kelley and her twin sister have lunched at the White House twice, and they toured the White House days before the scandal broke. Records show Paula Broadwell has also visited the White House, attending meetings on Afghanistan. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
Jill Kelley and Paula Broadwell, the two women at the center of the David Petraeus scandal, both visited the White House multiple times during the last four years.
Kelley has visited three times since September of this year, and Broadwell’s two visits were in 2009 and 2011, a White House official told NBC News on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Kelley’s trips were set up by a White House staffer she met at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., where she served as an unpaid social coordinator.
The staffer hosted Kelley and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam, for breakfast in the White House cafeteria, known as the mess, on Sept. 28 and again, for lunch, on Oct. 24.
The third visit, on Sunday, Nov. 4, occurred just three days before Gen. Petraeus resigned as CIA director, citing an extramarital affair. Kelley also took a tour of the White House that day with her husband, Scott, and their three children, as well as Khawam and her child.
Broadwell visited the White House twice -- in June 2009, when she met with a National Security Staff member who handled Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, and in June 2011 when she attended a broad briefing on Afghanistan-Pakistan for approximately 20 guests, according to the White House official.
The women have emerged as key figures in the scandal that cost Petraeus his job.
Numerous government and law enforcement officials have told NBC News that Kelley inadvertently triggered the investigation that revealed Petraeus' extramarital affair with Broadwell, his biographer, by complaining to an FBI agent she knew about a series of harassing emails she had received. Agents investigating the cyber-harassment case first determined that Broadwell was the author of the emails, then found evidence of her affair with Petraeus, the officials said.
Jill Kelley, the Tampa woman at the center of the scandal that brought down David Petraeus, reportedly had connections that went beyond the social and military elite of Tampa. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
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