committee and what happens if he doesn't? and the president wants a parade, and washington wants to know about the price tag. we begin, though, with that scandal. the sudden departure of rob porter, white house staff secretary. an alleged spousal abuser two times over. jim acosta has late details. what do we know about rob porter's resignation and how it came about? >> reporter: essentially, anderson, they were starting to work on this over the last 24 to 48 hours when this daily mail story broke. they knew they had to respond to this, and essentially what they've been saying up until really late today was that, you know, there were some thoughts that rob porter could weather this storm. and, you know, rob porter himself put out a statement saying that much of this is not true. of course he resigned earlier today, and the white house had to deal with this at the daily briefing. but this is the statement from rob porter, talking about these allegations of abuse from two of his ex-wives. these allegations are simply