White House staffer tells Oversight Committee of 'grave' concerns with security clearances

Source: The Hill | April 1, 2019 | Morgan Chalfant and Olivia Beavers

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Monday released a memo detailing “grave” national security concerns raised by a White House staffer over the Trump administration’s security clearance process and announced plans to subpoena a former White House official as part of an ongoing investigation into security clearances.

The whistleblower, Tricia Newbold, participated in a transcribed interview with Democratic and Republican committee staff in late March “to expose grave and continuing failures of the White House security clearance system, including the security clearance adjudications of senior White House officials,” according to a memo detailing her accusations released by Cummings on Monday. 

Among her allegations, Newbold told the committee that Trump administration officials overruled her and other career officials in more than two dozen instances in order to grant clearances to officials and contractors despite there being “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds.

In a separate letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Cummings accused the White House of “obstructing” his committee’s ongoing probe and said that the committee will vote Tuesday on whether to authorize a subpoena for Carl Kline, the White House’s former personnel security director who served there for the first two years of President Trump’s administration, to appear for a transcribed interview before the committee.

Cummings’s letter cites the committee’s private interview with Newbold, who he says came forward to the committee to discuss “the grave security risks she has been witnessing first-hand over the past two years.”

According to a 10-page memo that Cummings released on Monday, Newbold, who has worked as a career official in the Executive Office of the President for 18 years, told committee staff that she and other career officials denied clearance applications for multiple security clearances that were later overturned by senior officials in order to allow those individuals to access classified material. 

She also said she began keeping a list last year of White House employees’ denials that were overturned and that the list names 25 officials, including two current senior White House officials who are not named in the memo.

“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 outlining Newbold’s allegations states.

Newbold also spoke of an “unusually high number” of interim security clearances that in some cases were granted to individuals who reviewed highly sensitive information before their background checks were completed. In some cases, some individuals with such access were “later deemed unsuitable for access to classified information,” she added. 

“We were getting out of control with the interim clearances,” Newbold told the Oversight Committee’s staff, according to the memo.

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