Donald Trump’s secretive son-in-law Jared Kushner has been charged with managing large portions of the government: the Veterans Administration (VA), the U.S. prison system, and the Middle East to name some of his charges. The latter is usually the purview of the Secretary of State but not now. Recently, Trump and Kushner were just caught trying to sneak highly secret nuclear technology to the Arabs. There is one huge problem in this White House, and it is all about Kushner and 25 other top officials’ dirty secrets a whistleblower is uncovering.
The whistleblower in the White House Personnel Security Office said that upper level Trump people ignored national security and gave high-level security clearances to people who would not normally have received them. Why? Well, these clearances granted top-secret information to people who could have easily misused it.
The government employee who blew the secrecy wide open, Adjudications Manager in the Personnel Security office Tricia Newbold, noted that this pattern repeated itself over and over for months. She met with the House Oversight and Reform Committee last week to explain how the Trump White House mishandled security clearances.
Newbold also prepared a memo for the Congressional committee saying that Congress was her “last hope” to bring “integrity” back to her office. She has been trying to sound the alarm on over two dozen officials who were denied a security clearance at first, but then they were overridden:
‘I do not see a way forward positively in our office without coming to an external entity, and that’s because I have raised my concerns throughout the (Executive Office of the President) to career staffers as well as political staffers. And I want it known that this is a systematic, it’s an office issue, and we’re not a political office, but these decisions were being continuously overrode.’
The primary reasons for the whistleblower’s concerns were:
‘…foreign influence, outside activities … and personal conduct…The activities occurred prior to federal service.’
Newbold told Democratic and Republic staffers:
‘I would not be doing a service to myself, my country, or my children if I sat back knowing that the issues that we have could impact national security.’
Newbold called into question the former White House personnel security chief and her boss Carl Kline’s professionalism. There were at least 25 individuals in the denied-but-overridden category. Simply put, Trump’s hack Kline overruled intelligence officials. The whistleblower kept a list of those people, a number of whom had daily contact with Trump.
Staffers prepared a 10-page memo that encapsulated the whistleblower’s testimony. It read:
‘According to Ms. Newbold, these individuals had a wide range of serious disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct.’
The memo continued:
‘Ms. Newbold informed committee staff that this was an indication of the agency’s ‘serious concerns’ regarding the White House’s adjudicative outcome.’
Kline told Newbold to “change” one of her recommendations for a senior National Security Council official from unfavorable to favorable. She told her boss:
‘I said I absolutely would not.’
Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) has subpoenaed documents regarding Kushner’s security clearance and one that brought Newbold before the committee. He intends to subpoena Kline, too. Thus far, Cipollone has refused.
Cummings’ letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone stated:
‘You have refused to provide any information about the specific individuals the committee is investigating, the specific instances of abuse, wrongdoing, or mistakes we have identified, or the problematic practices of the White House Security Office over the past two years.’
Newbold testified before the Oversight committee:
‘Once we adjudicate it, the president absolutely has the right to override and still grant the clearance, but we owe it to the president and the American people to do what is expected of us, and our job is to adjudicate national security adjudications regardless of influence.’
According to the memo, The White House tried to stop Newbold from testifying. There were additional whistleblowers:
‘…but they were too afraid about the risk to their careers to come forward publicly.’
She was suspended two weeks without pay in retaliation.
