Why Kushner Won't Lose His Security Clearance

[DonViejo]

July 16, 2017 at 11:53 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

“The decision over whether Jared Kushner will be stripped of his security clearance could ultimately be made by one man — his father-in-law, President Trump,” Politico reports.

“Kushner’s actions — including initially failing to disclose meetings with Russian officials — would be more than enough to cost most federal employees their security clearances… But Kushner isn’t your average federal government employee.”

###

https://politicalwire.com/2017/07/16/kushner-wont-lose-security-clearance/

[maxsolomon]

1. pretty much

power over pardons has been given to a bully who's entire life philosophy is "oh yeah? try and stop me."

[matt819]

2. Here's what needs to be done

The CIA needs to include in a briefing to Kushner intel that they can track back to him if any of it is improperly shared with Russia. That could be a pretty complex operation but it is doable, ideally in coordination with the Mueller investigation.

[Orrex]

3. Only if Kushner still has active contact with Russia

If he does not, and if this planted-info plan is revealed, Trump and his idiot acolytes will claim that it completely exonerates Kushner.

[Igel]

4. That starts sounding like a conspiracy.

Those are risky, because they usually involve right up front saying that the conspirators are more important and have more authority than their boss.

I did this once, and when I presented it (ultimately, to my boss) I wasn't sure what the reaction was going to be. Five minutes in, I still wasn't sure. But my boss understood why I went around him and did what I did. The result was I was sworn to secrecy over what I'd found, and his realization he'd been duped. (Had I done this 5 years later he would have walked me to the edge of the property and told me to never set foot on it again.)

In the case of "improper sharing" of intel, you have to understand where authority for classifying information starts.

This is it:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526

Any official has authority over anything classified by somebody else at a lower level. See who's at the top of the heap? The President cannot ever improperly (in any legal sense) share classified information. By the speech act of saying it to a person he's authorizing that person to have that information, no matter what anybody else lower in the food chain may think. If he's authorized somebody to share the information, gain, that authority trumps some lowly station chief. By definition.

The President should use the ways outlined in the EO, but those can be revised at the drop of a signature. I'm surprised Trump hasn't revised the EO, because most presidents reissue the thing with usually trivial changes (if only because they don't want to let their predecessor's EO and delegation of authority stand).

[Wolf Frankula]

5. No Kushner isn't an average federal government employee

He's Dmitriy Bumshteyn's son in law. His relatives are above the law.

Wolf