Call raised new red flag on Kushner

WASHINGTON — A top Justice Department official alerted the White House two weeks ago that significant information requiring additional investigation would further delay the security clearance process of senior adviser Jared Kushner, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

The Feb. 9 phone call from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to White House Counsel Don McGahn came as public scrutiny mounted over the number of administration officials without final security clearances. Most prominent among them is Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who has had access to some of the nation’s most sensitive material for the past year while waiting for his background investigation to be completed.

A week after the call from Rosenstein, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly announced that staff members whose clearances have not been finalized will no longer be able to view top-secret information — meaning that Kushner stood to lose his status as early as Friday.

As president, Trump can grant Kushner a high-level security clearance even if his background investigation continues to drag on. But Trump said Friday that he would leave that decision to Kelly.

“I will let Gen. Kelly make that decision, and he’s going to do what’s right for the country and I have no doubt he’ll make the right decision,” Trump said during a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, where he addressed the security clearance issue for the first time.

Kelly, in a memo released last week, had set a Friday deadline for halting access to top-secret information for those whose applications have been pending since June 1 or earlier. Some officials are expected to leave their posts as a result, while others will continue working with reduced — or no — access to classified information.

A White House official said staff members affected by the memo were being notified individually Friday. Those with temporary “top secret” or higher clearances are expected to be bumped down to temporary “secret” clearances, which provide more limited access.

Some may be required to be “read out” of the information they are losing access to — a security briefing in which they again acknowledge the classified nature of the information and agree once more not to disclose it.

At the news conference, the president heaped praise on Kushner, calling him a master deal-maker and saying he’d “done an outstanding job.” He noted Kushner does not take a salary, and complained he’d been treated “very unfairly” by the press.

Trump also complained he’d inherited a “broken” background-check system in which it can take “months and months and months” for full security clearance to be granted, even for people without complicated financial holdings.

UPDATE INTENDED

In his phone conversation with McGahn, Rosenstein intended to give an update on the status of Kushner’s background investigation. He did not specify the source of the information that officials were examining, the three people said.

Justice Department officials said Rosenstein did not provide any details to the White House about the matters that need to be investigated relating to Kushner.

“The Deputy Attorney General has not referenced to the White House any specific concerns relating to this individual’s security clearance process,” spokesman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the status of Kushner’s clearance or on information relayed by Rosenstein to McGahn.

Kushner’s interim clearance allows him to view both top-secret and sensitive compartmented information — classified intelligence related to sensitive sources. With that designation, he has been able to attend classified briefings, get access to the president’s daily intelligence report and issue requests for information to the intelligence community.

Security-clearance experts said it is rare to have such a high level of interim clearance for such a long period of time. Typically, senior officials do not get interim access to top-secret and sensitive compartmented material for more than three months, experts said.