Trump says John Kelly will decide on classified access for 'high-quality person' Jared Kushner


Chief of Staff John Kelly will make the decision about whether to revoke access to classified information for Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, the president said Friday. Trump expressed confidence in Kelly's judgment and praised his son-in-law as "a high-quality person" who "has been treated unfairly."
Kushner "works for nothing," Trump added. "Nobody ever reports that. He gets zero. He doesn't get a salary." Many media outlets reported White House staff salaries, including Kushner's $0 rate, when they were published last summer.
Kushner is among more than 100 White House staff of varying levels of seniority who still lacked security clearance as of November, and he has so far resisted Kelly's move to limit his information access before clearance is granted.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
On Friday evening, The Washington Post reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the White House two weeks ago that Kushner's background check had uncovered information requiring additional investigation and thus further delaying his clearance process. Rosenstein reportedly did not tell the White House what his department has learned.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
Musk's latest Grok AI controversy and what it reveals about chatbots
In the Spotlight The spread of misinformation serves as a reminder of how imperfect chatbots really are
-
Get a taste of a place at these regional US restaurant chains
The Week Recommends Eat where the locals do
-
Bombing of fertility clinic blamed on 'antinatalist'
speed read A car bombing injured four people and damaged a fertility clinic and nearby buildings in Palm Springs, California
-
Biden diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer
speed read The diagnosis hits close to home, as the former president 'dedicated much of his later career to cancer research'
-
Supreme Court weighs court limits amid birthright ban
speed read President Trump's bid to abolish birthright citizenship has sparked questions among federal judges about blocking administration policies
-
Gabbard fires intelligence chiefs after Venezuela report
speed read Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the top two officials leading the National Intelligence Council
-
Trump vows to lift Syria sanctions
speed read The move would help the new government stabilize the country following years of civil war
-
Senate rejects Trump's Library of Congress takeover
speed read Congress resisted the president's attempts to control 'the legislative branch's premier research body'
-
Hamas frees US hostage in deal sidelining Israel
speed read Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old soldier, was the final living US citizen held by the militant group
-
White Afrikaners land in US as Trump-declared refugees
speed read An exception was made to Trump's near-total ban on admitting refugees for the white South Africans
-
Qatar luxury jet gift clouds Trump trip to Mideast
speed read Qatar is said to be presenting Trump with a $400 million plane, which would be among the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the US government