President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.
The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.
You may chuckle at the idea of "memo writing" as a hard-line response to interoffice shenanigans, but it's a time-honored practice in politics (as known as Cover Your Ass). Because of laws governing the archiving and storage of official memos (and unofficial communications like emails and whatnot), if you get it in writing you objected to a serious problem like say a national security risk to our nation's highest military and diplomatic secrets, then when the whole thing falls apart in the inevitable blowback you can claim you gave fair warning and avoid getting nailed to the wall as a scapegoat. You may even sometimes help prove a criminal act took place that may lead to said crooks getting handcuffed and sentenced (as long as the rest of the government does its damn job).
Back to the Times reporting:
The full scope of intelligence officials’ concerns about Mr. Kushner is not known. But the clearance had been held up in part over questions from the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. about his foreign and business contacts, including those related to Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the events.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Kushner was part of a group that met with a Russian lawyer who went to Trump Tower claiming to have political “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. And during the presidential transition, Mr. Kushner had a meeting with the Russian ambassador at the time, Sergey I. Kislyak, and the head of a Russian state-owned bank. When he applied for a security clearance, he did not reveal those meetings.
This was something that was out there for a long time. Since the earliest days of trump's misrule, news kept getting out that Kushner was
If we can go to Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly:
In a report from a year ago, the Washington Post identified some of the concerns the intelligence community had in granting a security clearance to Kushner.
Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.
Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.
It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.
It is very likely that intelligence officials were also concerned about several exchanges Kushner had with Russians. For example:
* In June 2016, Kushner was involved in the meeting Don, Jr. arranged with Russians at Trump Tower.
* In December 2016, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, the top executive of a Russian bank, who reported that they talked about “promising business lines and sectors.”
* In December 2016, Kushner met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who reported that they discussed setting up a secret communications channel with Moscow, using Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S.
That only covers what we know about possible concerns the intelligence community had when it came to granting a security clearance to Kushner. But it gives you some idea why both Kelly and McGahn put their objections in writing. Nevertheless, Trump overruled them...trump overruled them because like any crime boss, he can't operate without his closest people. And like most crime organizations, his closest people are his own family (and those married into his mob).
Outside of his own kids (and Kushner), trump truly cannot trust anybody. Without Kushner managing things for him, trump would have to rely on people with disparate agendas and differing loyalties like he had to during the early years of this shadow theater. Look at how trump's gone through half his starting Cabinet, he's on his third Chief of Staff (and Mulvaney is reportedly eyeing the exits), he's burned through Communications officials and Security Advisors, and he's overdue on firing half the Department of Justice just for shits and giggles.
trump can't trust any of them. Instead, he trusts a son-in-law who in debt to foreign powers (much like trump himself) and he trusts those foreign powers over his own NSA/FBI/CIA intel.
This is what faces our entire national security system today. They are compromised not by some angry or turned agent working in a cubicle somewhere copying files and selling them to foreigners, but by a criminal (trump) managed by those foreign powers (Russia and now we suspect others) elected by a corrupt party (Republicans) to oversee the whole damn show.
We are so very very very royally fucked.
1 comment:
They all behave as if they were mobbed up because they are, in fact, mobbed up.
Basically, Fergus saved (sort of) his business empire by laundering money for the Russian mob. A lot of it right out in the open.
The only encouraging thing about this whole mess that I can see is the fact that Mueller spent decades taking down the US arm of the Russian mob, and staffed his investigation with prosecutors who specialized in mob justice.
As for a security clearance, none of those bastards should be allowed within 500 yards of any sensitive information of any kind, and that will be shown to have been catastrophically true before the whole thing is over.
-Doug in Oakland
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