House Oversight Committee launches probe into White House security clearances

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published 23 January 2019

The House Oversight Committee announced on Wednesday it is launching an inquiry into the White House security clearance process.

The committee is now led by Democrats, and its chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), sent the White House a letter stating the probe is due to "grave breaches of national security at the highest level of the Trump administration." The goal of the investigation, he added, is to "determine why the White House and transition team appear to have disregarded established procedures for safeguarding classified information, evaluate the extent to which the nation's most highly guarded secrets were provided to officials who should not have had access to them, and develop reforms to remedy the flaws in current White House systems and practices."

The committee is requesting information on several current and former White House officials, including Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, and former aide Rob Porter, who was accused of spousal abuse. Despite the allegations against him, Porter was able to get an interim security clearance, and Kushner had to edit his application for a top-level clearance three times because he left out more than 100 foreign contacts.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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