House Democrats are asking Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff, to revoke Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s security clearance as soon as possible. Kushner initially had difficulty getting clearance, but the White House intervened to override the process to get him cleared.
Salon says that House Democrats, led by Reps. Don Beyer of Virginia and Ted Lieu of California, asked yesterday that Mulvaney pull Kushner’s clearance.
“The White House’s pattern of hiding the truth and devious behavior with regard to Mr. Kushner’s security clearance suggests that the administration does not take information security seriously,” the House representatives wrote in a joint statement.
The House Democrats are responding to an NBC report that Kushner was denied security clearance twice by two separate security specialists after his FBI background check raised serious red flags about the husband of Ivanka Trump having access to secure documents. But Kushner was given clearance despite these factors.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland of the House Oversight and Reform Committee has launched an investigation into the White House security clearance process that gave Kushner and former White House staffer Rob Porter clearance despite negative FBI reports.
Beyer and Lieu used five different letters sent to the White House which raised concerns about Kushner and his relationships with foreign officials and omissions of foreign travel as proof that concerns should have been raised all along.
“what in the world is a U.S. official doing advising a foreign leader on how to escape blame for the murder of a U.S. national…?” https://t.co/lu13HmV6jJ …
— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) February 1, 2019
The representatives say that they never got a response and that they have proof that White House supervisor Carl Kline was the one who overruled the clearance decision in the Kushner case and is responsible for 29 other clearances.
“Members of Congress are now placed in the impossible position of wondering who these 30 officials are that received clearances despite being rejected by the career security officials, what the ‘unfavorable information’ was in their records and why they still have ongoing access to sensitive national security information.”
Beyer and Lieu have also raised questions about Ivanka Trump’s clearance and yet have gotten no response. The House is demanding answers and suggests that it is all part of a major cover-up.
The Inquisitr reports that Jared Kushner is also in hot water in the Mueller investigation as a result of questionable transactions with Deutsche Bank. During what they are calling a routine investigation, investigators found some “suspicious transactions” by Kushner as part of the Kushner Companies.
Deutsche Bank is reportedly willing to share their findings with Robert Mueller and his team as they look into the involvement of foreign governments in the Trump campaign.
