Opinion: Trump’s latest corrupt move for Jared Kushner may blow up in his face
By Greg Sargent Greg Sargent Opinion writer covering national politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer March 1 at 10:45 AM The news that President Trump privately overruled his own intelligence officials to grant top-secret security clearance for son-in-law Jared Kushner has been met in some quarters with a measure of resignation.
Then-White House counsel Donald McGahn argued against it. If officials are at odds over whether to grant clearance, the White House counsel makes the determination, and in this case, McGahn was mindful that intelligence officials still had concerns about Kushner.It turns out there’s also a paper trail. As the Times notes, then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly wrote a “contemporaneous internal memo” detailing how he had been “ordered” to give Kushner the clearance.
“Congress should subpoena the memos,” Rep. Eric Swalwell , who is on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, told me. “They would inform us as to whether the recommendations of experienced background investigators were being ignored, and whether this jeopardized national security secrets. The public should know if our secrets are in the hands of unscrupulous individuals.”
In this case, we’re talking about an act of astonishing corruption and recklessness — with an unusual capacity for doing Trump political damage. Just to be very clear, the Times report notes that intelligence officials didn’t want to grant Kushner top-secret security clearance.
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