Dozens of White House officials & Trump appointees never got security clearance — like Jared Kushner, Rob Porter

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/09/because-nothing-matters.html

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That’s all right. It’s not as if they keep secrets.

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I’m pretty sure the sitting POTUS wouldn’t pass a security check.

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We are sooo fucked.

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But we have to shut down immigration until we can do extreme vetting on people who won’t have access to state secrets.

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This seems appropriate here: “BUT HER EMAILS…”

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The people who grant security clearances have said privately that there’s no way in Hell Trump could ever receive one without being president. (We should be relieved, I guess, that he apparently never reads the daily intelligence briefings.) Considering he picks those like himself to work in the White House (and they self-select), there’s got to be a fairly consistent issue with people being unable to pass the background checks.

It’s not like Trump or his followers actually understood what the issue with her emails was supposed to be, anyways. Trump benefits from having ignorant supporters in that he can do exactly what he attacks other people for (and worse), and they don’t realize it. Hell, mostly he doesn’t realize it.

Yeah, but this is probably the least of it.

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The process can take years… though somehow I’d think white house personnel would be fast tracked.

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The janitorial staff where I work needs to pass a federal background check. I guess the President’s daily security briefing isn’t as important as we’ve been lead to believe.

Or they’re already giving it to the Russians anyway.

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Ask Jared about German banks…he loves that one!

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I imagine Fox News will consider this more evidence of bias at the FBI.

News Flash: the FBI isn’t holding up security clearances because these guys are Republicans, they’re holding up security clearances because these guys are criminals and bumbling idiots.

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Well, let’s be fair. Jared Kushner isn’t old enough to get a security clearance.

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Let’s be more fair: stop picking on Jared. How would you feel if you knew your father-in-law was doing your wife?

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Remember, Trump only hires the most talented, most qualified people available to serve in his administration.
So what if they lack the ethical track record necessary for a security clearance, have little expertise, and have personal views which are the antithesis of the duties for which they were hired?

If they swear absolute loyalty to their Supreme Leader, it’s all good,

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It’s unusual for the process to take this long:

EDIT: It probably doesn’t help that Jared has had to amend his security clearance forms 39 times to add hundreds of additional foreign contacts he just plum forgot!

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Only if someone is doing it wrong. A basic “Secret” clearance might take a month or so unless there are oddities or information that doesn’t match what the person put on their application or things can’t be verified.

Very high level ones might take six months but not years. Some agencies have a backlog because they need a lot of people cleared and there may be a shortage of trained investigators.

The agency I worked for used contractors a lot: Retired or semi-retired agents of the agency or allied agencies or other high level law enforcement types.

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Surprise?

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Admittedly, it’s getting harder to tell them apart.

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yeah sure, not in the U.S, it’s not the only country you know.

But these are’t going to be a basic Confidential or Secret. These are gonna be TS/SCI at a minimum. There will likely have to be polygraphs. For years there was a backlog and then there was the debacle with leaked SF-86’s. There were also serious problems with investigators just rubber stamping people and not actually doing the background investigation.

High level people should be fast tracked, but it’s not even remotely surprising to me that it would take over a year.

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