Tag: security clearances

‘Whistleblower’ seeks protection after sounding alarm over White House security clearances

Tricia Newbold says her supervisor “repeatedly mishandled security files and has approved unwarranted security clearances.”

A White House security specialist is seeking official whistleblower protection from the federal government after raising concerns about “unwarranted security clearances” for administration officials, including Jared Kushner, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The specialist, Tricia Newbold, filed the whistleblower complaint less than two weeks after she was suspended without pay for defying her supervisor, Carl Kline.

The complaint, which was obtained by NBC News, alleges Newbold raised concerns with Kline about a security clearance for an individual as early as July 2017. The complaint does not identify the person, but sources familiar with the situation told NBC News that it was Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser.

View the complete February 13 article by Laura Strickler on the NBC News website here.

Trump caught weaponizing security clearances to kill bad news stories

The following article by Caroline Orr was posted on the ShareBlue.com website August 18, 2018:

Trump doesn’t control the media from the inside — so he’s taking a page from the modern authoritarian’s playbook and trying to control it from the outside, instead.

Credit: Olivier Doulier,/Abaca Press Sipa via AP Images

After revoking the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan on Wednesday, the White House reportedly started plotting to do the same to other intelligence leaders and national security officials — and then to strategically announce the decisions in an effort to control the news cycle.

According to The Washington Post, the White House has already drafted documents to strip security clearances from a laundry list of current and former officials associated with the Russia investigation.

A senior White House official told the Post on Friday that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and deputy chief of staff Bill Shine have discussed when would be the best times to drop the news of the additional revoked security clearances. The plan, according to the Post, is to use the revocations as a distraction from negative news stories.

View the complete article here.

President Trump Says He Will Revoke Justice Department Official’s Security Clearance

President Donald Trump says he expects to “quickly” revoke the security clearance for the Justice Department official whose wife worked for the firm involved in producing the dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia.

Source:  Time.com

The Trump White House’s hypocritical, slippery slope on purging its critics’ security clearances

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website July 23, 2018:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on July 23 that President Trump is “exploring the mechanisms to remove security clearance” for six former intelligence officials. (Reuters)

Now we know why President Trump complained about former intelligence officials being paid as cable analysts. On Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was looking into whether to revoke the security clearances of some of his chief intelligence and law enforcement critics for, among other things, “politicizing” and “monetizing” their past positions.

Here are the people Sanders listed:

  • Former CIA director John Brennan
  • Former FBI director James B. Comey
  • Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr.
  • Former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden
  • Former White House national security adviser Susan E. Rice
  • Former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe

The potential move appears mostly symbolic. Brennan and Hayden quickly noted that they don’t use their clearance anymore. And McCabe has already lost his clearance, given that he was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The fact that McCabe was included on the list suggests this wasn’t exactly a well-researched trial balloon — if it even was researched.

View the complete article here.

Trump’s blacklist: White House considers targeting security clearances

The following article was posted on the Axios website July 23, 2018:

Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Monday that President Trump is considering revoking former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance, as well as those of several other former intelligence officials, claiming they’ve “politicized and in some cases actually monetized their public service security clearances” and have made “baseless accusations” against the president.

Why it matters: These former intelligence officials have all been quick to criticize the president, with Brennan being a leading voice of opposition following Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As some White House reporters pointed out in the briefing, revoking their clearances has the optics of political retaliation.

Others on Trump’s blacklist: Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor Director Michael Hayden, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

View the complete post here.