More Than 130 White House Officials Lack Permanent Security Clearances as of November

More than 130 political appointees working in the Executive Office of the President did not have their permanent security clearance as of November 2017, including top officials such as the president's daughter, son-in-law, and his top legal counsel Don McGahn, according to internal White House documents that were obtained by NBC News. 

47 of those appointees without permanent security clearances were in positions that report directly to President Donald Trump, and a quarter of all political appointees in the executive office are working with an interim security clearance. 

White House officials said they would not be commenting on Wednesday due to its policy on the nature of security clearances, so it's unclear if some employees had their clearance levels altered since mid-November. 

The documents show that 85 political appointees across the White House, vice president's office, and the National Security Council were working without permanent security clearances and 50 appointees were working with interim security clearances in officed linked to the West Wing. 

White House officials included Ivanka Trump, senior adviser and the president's daughter; Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser; Dan Scavino, the president's director of social media, and Don McGahn, the White House counsel. 

The list also said 34 people who started their government service on the first day of the Trump presidency on Jan. 20, 2017, were still on interim clearances in November, including White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah. 

The National Security Council had 42 percent, or 10 of 24 officials listed as having only interim clearances as of November, including Dina Powell, a deputy national security adviser who left in January. 

Powell's replacement, Nadia Schadlow, joined the Trump White House in last March and was still on an interim clearance in mid-November.

Fiona Hill, the NSC's senior director for European and Russian affairs was also operating on an interim clearances, along with Kevin Harrington, the NSC's senior director for strategic planning; John Rader, the special assistant to the president for national security affairs; and Joshua Steinman, the NSC's senior director for international security. 

Legal experts said that the lack of a permanent security clearance does not necessarily mean the individual has a problematic background. 

The Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified earlier this week how he would suggest minimal access to anyone without a permanent security clearance for classified documents. 

“But if you do that, it has to be a specific interim with controlled access and limited access, and that has to be clear right from the beginning,” Coats said. “You can’t just say an interim allows me to do anything.”

The levels of clearance described in the documents for the political appointees range from secret to top secret to SCI. 

Senior White House officials are held to the top-secret or SCI clearance, which includes information that if revealed would cause exceptionally grave damage to national security, according to the Government Accountability Office. 

The report also said SCI was “classified information concerning, or derived from, intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes that must be handled within formal access control systems established by the Director, Central Intelligence Agency.”

Ty Cobb, the president's lawyer in the White House who is currently focusing on the Russia investigation, was serving the president with an interim security clearance as of November. 

Earlier this week, White House official George Banks who worked as an assistant to the president for economic policy, resigned after he was told that he would not be receiving a permanent security clearance. 

Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have raised concerns about security clearance issues within the Trump administration since the transition period started in 2016, but the investigation was renewed after staff secretary Rob Porter's clearance came into light after domestic violence allegations became public from two of his ex-wives. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) wrote separate letters to both White House chief of staff John Kelly and FBI Director Christopher Wray to request information about how interim clearances are investigated and whether Porter's case specifically abided by the rules. 

-WN.com, Maureen Foody