The Mueller report left Democrats looking like a bunch of slack-jawed idiots, barely able to swallow the news that their two years of obstructionist effort had been wasted. Sore from their defeat and willing to bludgeon a dead horse, now Democrats are coming after President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.
Democrats with the House Oversight Committee nearly tripped over themselves trying to seize upon the claim that a White House whistleblower had revealed 25 officials that were given high-level security clearance despite being originally denied.
The pair top the list with Kushner being identified as “Senior White House Official 1” and Ivanka being “Senior White House Official 2” in a memo sent from Democratic Oversight Committee staffers to committee members.
The memo took much of its information from an interview made with White House security adviser Tricia Newbold.
Newbold has held her position as a nonpartisan career employee for over 18 years. She stated that the decisions she and other career officials made were regularly “overturned by senior officials in order to grant the employees access to classified information.”
Newbold began to compile a list of those who have been granted security privileges after being denied, which presently includes “two current senior White House officials.”
Names have not been officially tied to Newbold’s 25 individuals, but details of her allegations have led officials to conclude that Kushner and Trump are part of the 25.
Now the Oversight Committee has sent a letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone for Newbold’s full list of “approximately 25 individuals who were granted security clearances or eligibility to access national security information despite recommendations to deny their applications.”
In response, Republicans on the Oversight Committee submitted their own memo objecting to “Chairman Cummings’s unilateral and partisan investigation into White House security clearances.” They claim that Democrats’ have “cherry-picked excerpts from Ms. Newbold’s transcribed interview.”
“Chairman Cummings solicited this material from Ms. Newbold despite Ms. Newbold’s stated reservations about discussing highly personal information about White House officials. We did not intend to release any material from the interview; however, Chairman Cummings’s reckless decision to release cherry-picked excerpts forces us to provide this supplemental information,” the Republican staffers said.
