Democrats: Hand over Kushner data

Panel inquires into potential security clearance process abuses

WASHINGTON — A Democratic House committee chairman investigating possible abuses of the government’s security clearance process stepped up demands Friday to see key documents and interview potential witnesses from the White House in light of a new report that President Donald Trump personally intervened to grant his son-in-law Jared Kushner a top-secret clearance despite legal and national security concerns.

The chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who leads the House Oversight and Reform Committee, accused the White House in a new letter of stonewalling his requests for information and implied that if it did not comply voluntarily, he would issue a subpoena to compel its cooperation.

He said the report, published by The New York Times, added new concerns that Trump was lying to the public about his role in the clearance process to existing and broader questions about irregularities surrounding who should have access to sensitive government secrets.

“If true, these new reports raise grave questions about what derogatory

information career officials obtained about Mr. Kushner to recommend denying him access to our nation’s most sensitive secrets,” Cummings wrote in a letter to Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. The letter went on to ask about “why President Trump concealed his role in overruling that recommendation, why General Kelly and Mr. McGahn both felt compelled to document these actions, and why your office is continuing to withhold key documents and witnesses from this Committee.”

The report in The New York Times said that Trump’s intervention so concerned senior administration officials that John Kelly, then the White House chief of staff, documented the action in a contemporaneous internal memo that said he had been “ordered” to grant Kushner a top-secret clearance.

The Times also reported that Don McGahn, then the White House counsel, wrote a memo of his own documenting concerns raised by the CIA and other officials about Kushner. McGahn, the memo noted, had recommended against giving him such broad access to the government’s secrets.

Both Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump have publicly denied the president was involved in securing a clearance for Kushner. The president told The New York Times in a Jan. 31 interview that he did not direct Kelly or similar officials to grant a clearance for his son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump told ABC News last month that her father was not involved in the process.

In the first year of the administration, Kushner held an interim security clearance that allowed him to view both top-secret and sensitive compartmented information, which is classified intelligence

related to sensitive sources. With that designation, he had been able to attend classified briefings, get access to the president’s daily intelligence report and issue requests for information to the intelligence community.

But there was widespread concern in the White House about Kushner’s lack of a permanent clearance. Indeed, Democrats on Capitol Hill are also now questioning why Kushner had such trouble attaining that status.

The White House security clearance process has been a major focus for Oversight Committee Democrats over the past two years. Cummings even garnered bipartisan support for his bid to investigate the matter in the wake of reports that Rob Porter, a former White House aide who had been accused of beating his ex-wife, had been denied a clearance but still worked in a top position.

At the time, Republicans controlled the House, and then-Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., joined Cummings in requesting more information about the process. When the White House ignored the requests, however, Gowdy refused Cummings’ pleas to subpoena the information.

Now, with Democrats in charge of the House — and Cummings wielding expansive subpoena authority — the White House won’t be able to ignore Congress’ questions without the potential for an adverse response. Already, there has been some back-and-forth between the panel and the White House, as Cummings relaunches his own security clearance investigation and increases the pressure on the administration for answers.

He has specifically requested information on the clearances of nine current and former administration officials, including Kushner and Porter. Among those whose clearances he intends to scrutinize are Trump’s current and former national

security advisers, John Bolton and Michael Flynn; a former senior director on the National Security Council, Robin Townley; a former deputy national security adviser, K.T. McFarland; as well as Sebastian Gorka, a former deputy assistant to the president.

Cummings has also asked for documents related to a review of the security clearance process that Kelly conducted in 2018 that concluded there were serious flaws in the system meant to vet high-level officials. And Cummings wants to talk to “all personnel in the White House Personnel Security Office.”

The White House has pushed back on the Oversight request, arguing that authority over the security clearance application process pales in comparison to the president’s.

“Congress, as well as the federal courts, have long recognized that the president enjoys broad discretion in selecting, and communicating with, his immediate advisers,” Cipollone wrote to Cummings on Jan. 31. “In view of the president’s paramount constitutional authority in these areas, congressional action must necessarily be circumscribed.”

In a sign that House Democrats would seek to further elevate the issue in their oversight agenda, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that his panel, responsible for overseeing U.S. intelligence agencies, would work with Cummings’.

Schiff called Trump’s actions the “latest indicator of the president’s utter disregard for our national security and for the men and women who sacrifice so much every day to keep us safe.”