Ivanka Trump claims president had ‘zero’ involvement in security clearances for her, Jared Kushner

Ivanka Trump claimed that her father, President Trump, was not involved in securing top security clearances for her or her husband, Jared Kushner. 

“There were anonymous leaks about there being issues. But the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance, zero,” she told ABC’s Abby Huntsman in an interview that aired Friday. 

{mosads}Ivanka Trump and Kushner, who both serve as White House advisers, had operated on temporary security clearances for over a year and a half while they waited for their background checks to clear. The two were issued permanent clearances last summer. 

“This isn’t new. This was happening under the Obama administration, the Clinton administration,” Ivanka Trump said.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s clearances have drawn criticism from some House Democrats.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) announced last month that Democrats in the House were opening an investigation into the White House security clearance process.

Cummings, in a letter to to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, accused the Trump administration of disregarding established protocols in a way that resulted in “grave breaches of national security.”

The Democrat demanded a slew of documents related to background investigations and security clearances of current and former officials, including Kushner. 

“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,” Cummings wrote.

Democratic Reps. Don Beyer (Va.) and Ted Lieu (Calif.) late last month called on acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to revoke Kushner’s security clearance, accusing the Trump administration of concealing information from Congress about security clearances.

Kushner’s security clearance has drawn intense scrutiny after White House security specialists reportedly rejected Kushner’s application for a top-secret security clearance following an FBI background check that raised concerns about potential foreign influence. NBC reported last month that their supervisor overruled them and approved Kushner’s clearance anyway, according to NBC.