Counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance dropped a chilling warning on Saturday that officials in Donald Trump’s White House appeared to have set up a secret network to share top-secret intelligence with Russia.
In an interview with MSNBC’s AM Joy, Nance said, “Was [Carl Kline] either influenced by a hostile foreign power or influenced by political preference within the White House and allowing these unclearable individuals to come in there to set up, like I said, a network where they could be compromising the national security of the United States?”
Kline, of course, was a hand-picked Trump official who overruled the objections of career security officials and approved security applications for dozens of flagged individuals like Kushner.
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.@MalcolmNance says Democrats need to thoroughly investigate why Jared Kushner and others were given top secret security clearance. #ctl #p2 #amjoy pic.twitter.com/1TjOvgTP93
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 26, 2019
Nance said:
There’s an additional point that I’m going to terrify you with right now. The counterintelligence professionals who are making these determinations that people shouldn’t have [clearance] are now going to or have probably thought about this individual, Mr. Klein, to determine was he allowing a network to set up within the White House? Was he himself either influenced by a hostile foreign power or influenced by political preference within the White House and allowing these unclearable individuals to come in there to set up, like I said, a network where they could be compromising the national security of the United States? If I was in counterintelligence at the FBI and definitely at the CIA, I would be pulling my hair out right now because we all know Jared Kushner, as you mentioned in the previous segment, asked a foreign power to use foreign cryptographic communication systems so he could speak behind the back of the United States government. You know what, the House needs to rip this thing apart because I think that what we’re going to find is, individuals for their own personal benefit, may have been using this information that they were given access to that they should never have ever seen.
The House plans to investigate White House security clearance process
With Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives, the Trump White House is no longer getting a free pass.
According to The Hill this week, “House Democrats are launching an expansive investigation into the White House security clearance process, accusing the Trump administration of disregarding established protocols in a way that has resulted in “grave breaches of national security.'”
In a letter, chairman of the House Oversight Committee Elijah Cummings wrote, “The goals of this investigation are to determine why the White House and Transition Team appear to have disregarded established procedures for safeguarding classified information, evaluate the extent to which the nation’s most highly guarded secrets were provided to officials who should not have had access to them, and develop reforms to remedy the flaws in current White House systems and practices.”
The president’s days of running an unchecked executive branch are over. After the Trump administration has operated for two years with no regard for U.S. national security or the rule of law, the investigations are starting to pile up.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
