Susan Wright on the Right
It should be as no shock to anyone who has been paying attention for the last several years that decisions within the Trump administration are being made to appease Trump’s ego and tendencies towards nepotism, rather than in the best interest of our nation.
This is what happens when a republic forgets its constitutional rights, with a citizenry who have become comfortable with being sheep, rather than patriots. Authoritarianism creeps in, taking small bites of our freedom, until none is left.
It gets so much worse.
When the populace is lulled into glassy-eyed compliance behind one central figure of control – the cult of personality – the safeguards put in place to keep the nation safe will begin to erode.
So we’ve pointed out previously the problem with security clearances for Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as for his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
Kushner and his wife were given close access to the president and what goes on within the administration, serving as senior advisers.
Just like Trump, neither of them have an iota of experience in government (unless you count all the donations through the years to liberal politicians), and all of them have a background littered with corruption.
These are not the kinds of people you want running your government.
Kushner and Ivanka Trump were initially denied security clearances, based on what officials determined to be their sketchy connections.
In the case of Kushner, his family business was struggling to stay afloat, which made him susceptible to any manner of coercion by foreign interests.
In fact, some foreign officials were recorded saying to only ask to deal with Kushner, precisely because his financial difficulties made him a prime target for manipulation.
As was recently revealed, President Trump ignored the warnings from officials, including White House counsel and John Kelly, who served at the time as his chief of staff. He demanded Kushner’s security clearance be pushed through, in spite of concerns.
He did the same for his daughter.
The Washington Post is reporting today that a whistleblower has stepped forward to speak with Congress, expressing her concern at just how reckless the Trump administration has been, in regards to security clearances.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a letter released Monday that the whistleblower, Tricia Newbold — a security specialist in the White House — had told members of his committee in an interview that that the Trump administration’s decisions to overturn clearance denials issued by her office could jeopardize national security and that coming forward marked her “last hope” to “bring the integrity back into” her office.
“She has informed the Committee that during the Trump Administration, she and other career officials adjudicated denials of dozens of applications for security clearances that were later overturned,” Cummings wrote in a letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.
“As a result, she warned that security clearance applications for White House officials ‘were not always adjudicated in the best interest of national security,’” Cummings wrote. “She also reported to the Committee that she has been targeted for retaliation after declining to grant security clearances based on longstanding national security protocols.”
Because of course she has.
When the ashes of this administration are raked over, and the last few embers of a razed republic smolder, a key marker will be left to remind us how we got there: Retaliation.
Never have we had such a petty, sniveling “president,” and the tragedy is that he has packed his administration with people who are just as bad. An even greater tragedy is that without a people willing to see the nation burn, as long as their tribe is the one lighting the match, we could have avoided all of this.
And that goes for both sides of the political aisle.
Republicans in Congress have failed us by not taking the high road and exerting their constitutional powers as a co-equal branch of government.
Newbold works as the Adjudications Manager in the Personnel Security Office, and handles those security clearance applications for senior positions within the White House. You can be sure she has the inside track on who is getting passed through and who is being denied, and what for.
She also knows when someone higher up the chain of command rejects the warnings of her office and allows sketchy people to handle sensitive government information.
Representative Cummings says that the members of the committee have conducted a thorough, on-the-record interview with Newbold, and I’m sure this news isn’t going to make her job any more comfortable.
Newbold came forward and “agreed to identify herself publicly at this time because she strongly believes that Congress must intervene immediately to safeguard our national security,” Cummings wrote. “She implored the Committee to act now, warning that ‘this is my last hope to really bring the integrity back into our office,’” he wrote.
Next in the barrel is Carl Kline, Newbold’s supervisor for the first two years of the Trump administration. He’s with the Department of Defense, now and he’ll be getting a subpoena, soon.
Kline is responsible for overruling at least 30 cases – including that of Jared Kushner – and approving top secret security clearance, in spite of red flags.
Newbold was suspended without pay because she defied Kline, or in other words, did her job. Two weeks later she filed a whistleblower complaint. In the complaint, she points out that she began raising concerns as early as July 2017. One of those she raised concerns about was, of course, Jared Kushner.
This is one more outrage to be added to an ever-growing list of outrages perpetuated by this ill-advised presidency. Let’s just hope the damage can be reversed.
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