President Donald Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling rejections for a clearance by intelligence officials and the White House's top lawyer, the NY Times website reports today (February 28, 2019).
Trump's decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been "ordered" to give Kushner the top-secret clearance.
The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Kushner -- including by the CIA -- and how McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.
The disclosure of the memos contradicts statements made by President Trump, who told the New York Times in January in an Oval Office interview that he had no role in his son-in-law receiving his clearance.
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