Fate of Kushner’s security clearance could ultimately lie with Trump
July 17, 2017 by admin
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The decision over whether Jared Kushner will be stripped of his security clearance could ultimately be made by one man — his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.
Kushner’s actions — including initially failing to disclose meetings with Russian officials — would be more than enough to cost most federal employees their security clearances, according to people familiar with the security-clearance process.
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“They would lose their job immediately,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. “Their clearance would be gone.”
But Kushner isn’t your average federal government employee.
The vast majority of security clearance background investigations for officials at federal agencies are handled through the Office of Personnel Management, where nameless government bureaucrats and contractors look for even the slightest of inconsistencies.
“We’ll have clients who, you know, have $2,000 worth of debt that they did not disclose — they pay it off during the investigation and they still don’t get approved for security clearance,” said Joanna Friedman, an attorney with the Federal Practice Group, who has spent a decade representing employees seeking security clearances.
White House officials, though, go through a slightly different process, according to sources familiar with it. For new White House employees who don’t already have a clearance sponsored by another agency, background investigations are typically conducted by the FBI, with possible involvement from the CIA. The FBI then forwards its recommendations to the White House.
The security clearance process is ultimately rooted in executive authority, not law, meaning the president himself is the ultimate arbiter. It is extremely rare for a president to wade into such an issue, experts said, but Trump does have the power, if he wanted to, to demand that Kushner keep his clearance.
“If the president wants someone to have a clearance and access to classified information, there’s no one to tell him no,” said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.
And this is a president who is fiercely loyal to his family.
As Trump biographer Tim O’Brien put it, “Trump has always put family first, even if family members lack the skill or experience for the type of job they’re being asked to do.”
“Trump wouldn’t take away his security clearance himself,” O’Brien said. “He would have to be convinced by his own attorneys and his staff that the issues had moved beyond familial loyalty. That’s going to take a lot of arm-twisting and convincing.”
And it suggests Democrats and other critics who say Kushner should lose his access to classified information may end up disappointed.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and serves in the White House as a senior adviser, has been given responsibility over a wide portfolio ranging from the opioid crisis to brokering a Middle East peace deal.
Not having a security clearance would hobble him from doing large swaths of his job. On many days, he receives classified briefings, according to a senior administration official — and he is often in the room with his father-in-law for sensitive decisions about classified issues.
He has traveled overseas with top military commanders and calls foreign leaders on his own.
One source said Kushner sometimes comes to National Security Council meetings “at least for part of the meeting” and that he often talks to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
In recent weeks, though, Kushner has become the top target of Democratic outrage over the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California on Friday ramping up her calls for his security clearance to be revoked.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that he should have that clearance,” Pelosi said at a news conference. “It’s not justified in any way. The president could revoke it in a moment, and he should.”
Federal employees often have temporary clearances for six months or more, and it is unclear whether Kushner has a permanent clearance.
Kushner initially omitted contacts with foreign officials on his security clearance application form, known as an SF-86, including meetings with Russia’s ambassador and a top Russian businessman. Kushner recently updated his SF-86 to include more than 100 foreign contacts, The New York Times reported.
And last week, it was revealed that Kushner attended a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer that was pitched as part of a Kremlin-backed effort to help the Trump campaign. A source familiar with the issue said Kushner was not told about the purpose of the meeting and did not read to the bottom of an email chain where the purpose was stated.
These and other revelations have led more than 50 House Democrats to urge the White House to revoke Kushner’s clearance.
Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer for Kushner, said her client had “prematurely” filed the first security clearance application form but has since done everything possible to be accurate and transparent with his meetings.
“Mr. Kushner’s SF-86 was prematurely submitted and, among other errors, did not list any contacts with foreign government officials,” Gorelick explained. “The next day, Mr. Kushner submitted supplemental information stating that he had had ‘numerous contacts with foreign officials’ about which he would be happy to provide additional information.
“He has since submitted this information,” Gorelick continued, “including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr.”
Omitting facts from a security questionnaire could be disqualifying if it was part of a deliberate effort to conceal them, according to federal guidelines; an inadvertent omission would not be so costly. Similarly, making “prompt, good-faith efforts” to correct the omission can mitigate security concerns.
When asked last week whether his clearance was still valid, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “As always, we’ve never discussed the security clearances.”
One government official who went through the process in the past six months said it was quite arduous.
Agents showed up at this person’s house out-of-state and interviewed his parents and other family members. There were dozens of forms, along with interviews with former colleagues and friends about this person’s personal and professional habits — from clients this person held in the past, to any foreign travel, to their history with alcohol and drugs.
This person said the agents appeared to be looking for even small inconsistencies in stories.
“I don’t think it’s that hard to get one, but if you had a meeting with a Russian government lawyer, I don’t think it would be that easy,” this person said. “That would be something they’d care about. They asked me if I’d ever even met with foreign clients.”
For most of the more than 4 million people who have security clearances in the United States, the process works like this: They are sponsored by an agency and undergo a background investigation. The vast majority of these background investigations are handled by the Office of Personnel Management, according to OPM spokeswoman Sandy Day.
Ultimate decisions about whether to grant the clearance — called adjudication — are typically made by the sponsoring agencies. The employee is then subject to periodic reinvestigations.
But for some White House employees, background investigations are instead handled by the FBI. The president, though, has ultimate authority, since the classification system is laid out in an executive order, rather than in law.
“If the president says give this person a clearance, nothing else really matters,” said Aftergood, the government secrecy expert. “There may be political consequences to such a move, but legally and otherwise, it’s entirely within the president’s authority to grant such a clearance.”
Kyle Cheney and Jacob Lahut contributed to this report.
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Israel reopens holy site after fatal attack on officers
July 17, 2017 by admin
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Jerusalem — Hundreds of Muslim worshipers visited a Jerusalem holy site Sunday after Israel reopened the compound following a rare closure in response to a deadly shooting last week that raised concerns about wider unrest.
For the first time in decades, Israel closed the site — known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount — on Friday after three Arab citizens of Israel opened fire from the sacred site with automatic weapons, killing two police officers. The three were later shot dead inside the compound.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that following consultations with security officials the site would be reopened Sunday afternoon with increased security measures that included metal detectors at the entrance gates and additional security cameras.
At midday, Israeli police opened two of the gates to the compound to allow worshipers to enter through the newly erected detectors. Police said some worshipers refused to go through them and knelt to pray outside instead. But despite concerns that the new measures could slow movement and spark renewed tensions, police said they appeared to be working fine and that 200 people had already passed through.
Israel did not coordinate the changes with Jordan, which serves as the custodian of the Muslim-administered site, according to a Jordanian government official.
Jordan’s stance is that anything installed at the site must be approved by the Waqf, or Muslim administration, and cannot change the status quo, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the still developing situation with reporters.
The Palestinian Minister of Jerusalem Adnan Husseini called for the security arrangements to return to how they were before the deadly attack, saying it “shouldn’t be an excuse for making changes.”
The attack triggered a rare phone conversation between Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who condemned the attack and called for the site to be reopened. Netanyahu sought to allay Muslim fears, saying that the status quo at the Muslim-administered site “will be preserved.” But Gaza’s Hamas rulers called the act a “religious war” and urged Palestinians to carry out more attacks.
Early Sunday, Israeli police said security forces shot dead a Palestinian assailant behind a pair of recent shooting attacks. Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police tracked down the 34-year-old suspect in a joint operation with the military. The suspect opened fire with an automatic weapon, prompting the troops to return fire, killing him.
In the past two years, Palestinians have killed 45 Israelis, two visiting Americans and a British tourist in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks. During that period, Israeli forces have killed more than 255 Palestinians, most of them said by Israel to be attackers while others were killed in clashes with Israeli forces.
Israel blames the violence on incitement by Palestinian political and religious leaders compounded on social media sites that glorify violence. Palestinians say the attacks stem from anger over decades of Israeli occupation of territories they claim for their future state.
The Jerusalem shrine has been the scene of repeated confrontations, including during the current wave of violence.
Israel has previously accused Palestinians of stockpiling rocks and other projectiles in one of the mosques in the holy compound. Israeli security forces have fired tear gas and stun grenades at the compound to disperse Palestinian stone throwers, who have at times targeted Jews praying at the adjacent Western Wall.
In September 2000, Israel’s then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the site, sparking Palestinian protests that quickly escalated into armed clashes between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers.
The incident was one of the triggers of an armed Palestinian uprising and an Israeli military crackdown. The violence claimed several thousand victims, most of them Palestinians, and only began to ebb in 2005.
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