He chalked up the incident as “a case where the skylarking and tomfoolery in an employment context has gone awry.”

He told the court this was a case of "skylarking and tomfoolery" that had "gone awry".

“Showers of rice” were thrown by “the jolly young people who had been skylarking the afternoon away in the White House,” the New York Times reported.

“I hate it! Nothing but grinding or skylarking. And I don’t like the way fellows do either, in this country.”

Some of them said he could be heavy-handed, which they had hoped would not happen after years of partisan skylarking by the previous chairman, Representative Darrell Issa of California.