There's a lot going on at the moment - lots of balls in the air. It's made all the more pressing by the way Donald Trump came storming into office, going to work with Sharpie in hand almost the second his hand went down from taking the oath.
What to do when your team (with one exception), the people you've picked to lead the charge, haven't been officially blessed yet?
Causing much angst today is one of the directives Trump signed to light a fire under the process so it doesn't stall, as it did during his first term.
MEMORANDUM TO THE WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL
SUBJECT: Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security
Clearances for Executive Office of the President
Personnel
The Executive Office of the President requires qualified and trusted personnel to execute its mandate on behalf of the American people. There is a backlog created by the Biden Administration in the processing of security clearances of individuals hired to work in the Executive Office of the President. Because of this backlog and the bureaucratic process and broken security clearance process, individuals who have not timely received the appropriate clearances are ineligible for access to the White House complex, infrastructure, and technology and are therefore unable to perform the duties for which they were hired. This is unacceptable.
Therefore, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order:
1. The White House Counsel to provide the White House Security Office and Acting Chief Security Officer with a list of personnel that are hereby immediately granted interim Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearances for a period not to exceed six months; and
3. The White House Counsel, as my designee, may supplement this list as necessary; and
4. The White House Counsel, as my designee, shall have the authority to revoke the interim clearance of any individual as necessary.
What it does is grant interim/temporary - expressly for a six-month period - top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) clearances to a designated list of trump appointees who have yet to be 'vetted' by the FBI (which doesn't mean their paperwork hasn't been submitted) so that they can function in the capacity they've been appointed to until the official FBI background check is completed. Nowhere does it state they will not continue in the vetting process while working within their interim clearance status - a reasonable inference from the six-month time limit.
As you can imagine, there are smelling salts aplenty about this move going around online.
President Donald Trump’s plan to grant temporary security clearances to anyone he chooses opens the door to breaches and even espionage, experts and former officials say. https://t.co/3hnrXS8De7
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) January 22, 2025
To many, while saying the move is 'dangerous' and 'stupid,' no one is denying Trump has the authority to do it.
...It’s a move national security lawyers inside and outside the government say is unusual, if not unprecedented.
One former US official who worked on clearance issues in the Biden and first Trump administrations raised concerns that foreign intelligence partners, on which the US relies for much of its intelligence work, will curtail what they share with the US, out of fear that their sources may be put in danger.
“They will start restricting their intelligence,” the official said. “If someone on the other end here has not been vetted, why would they share that?”
Trump made the move in one of the dozens of executive orders issued on his first day in office, immediately giving high-level clearances called TS/SCI to incoming officials, including some who have never been vetted for potential security vulnerabilities.
“It’s such a dangerous thing,” the former official said. “To forego that process is stupid.”
The FBI, which conducts the background investigations of officials and appointees usually required for security clearances, is working to clear a backlog of hundreds of applications. Part of the reason for that is Trump’s transition waited about a month after the November election to sign the agreements required for the FBI to begin its work, people briefed on the matter said.
Reportedly, FBI paperwork is holding up Senate confirmations. I'm sure it's all perfectly normal.
Senate committees are postponing confirmation hearings for several of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks over delays in completing background checks and ethics reviews.
Senate VA Committee Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said in a statement Monday that the committee will postpone its confirmation hearing for former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Trump’s pick to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, because the FBI has not completed its background check on the nominee.
Moran said in a statement Monday that Collins “has submitted all his paperwork in a timely manner and has been transparent and forthcoming with the committee.”
“In accordance with long-standing practice, the committee should have an opportunity to review Congressman Collins’ FBI file before the confirmation hearing,” he added.
Fox News reported that Senate committees won’t schedule confirmation hearings for former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., his pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, until the FBI completes its background checks on the nominees.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has also postponed its confirmation hearing for former Gov. Doug Burgum (R-N.D.), Trump’s pick to serve as Interior secretary, because the Office of Government Ethics has yet to complete its review of the nominee.
Now, there was a delay in the Trump transition team signing the documents they required to get the FBI ball rolling on crawling through people's dirty laundry.
But, gracious, I can't imagine why the Trump team would hesitate to throw things into the lap of the oh-so amenable and trustworthy Biden administration and their totally unbiased Justice Department before the election, which is when these agreements are typically signed.
...Trump’s transition team took longer than most incoming administrations to sign several key memos.
The team signed a memorandum of understanding with the White House in late November that allowed landing teams to receive briefings from agencies. In December, the team signed another memo with the Justice Department that allows Trump’s top political appointees to go through the security clearance process.
“It clearly is slowing down, to some degree, the confirmation process. How much is still unclear, but it is having something of an impact,” Stier said.
Presidential campaigns typically complete these memos before the election, to ensure a seamless transition between the incoming and outgoing administrations.
The Trump team, however, never signed a memo with the General Services Administration that would have given officials access to office space, IT equipment and federal staff.
Trump transition officials, wary of interference from the outgoing Biden administration, said the team instead relied on private political donations to handle these logistics.
“The Trump team started very late in both respects, in terms of engaging the Office of Government Ethics, as well as the FBI. The real question is to whether or not the Senate will put all those nominees to the test, in terms of the information that they need,” Stier said.
As far as a 'backlog' goes, I'm sure Trump is basing much of that on real-life experience dealing with Obama FBI bureaucrats slow-walking the vetting process for his first administration, even as those same G-men worked feverishly to undermine it with investigations, prosecutions, and tell-tale sightings of RUSSIAN COLLUSION!!! Everywhere.
According to the current hysteria, there should be no hard feelings or lessons learned, though, right? We're supposed to be 'bigger than that' when we win a round. Take it in the chops repeatedly as we always used to.
That's not happening this time. It has to be so frustrating for the other side when they've gotten so used to playing Republicans' inherent guilt and inferiority complexes like fiddles.
One thing Trump did manage was to begin to knock down the actual backlog his administration had encountered through an innovative business approach.
...The order notes these interim clearances aren’t to exceed six months, implying the White House intends for these individuals to go ahead and undergo a background investigation process through the FBI, which has historically been tasked with the job of conducting the vetting process for Senate-confirmed presidential employees and transition staff.
The order is less about addressing a backlog and more about the president exercising his constitutional right to grant clearances to the personnel he wants to – when he wants to – without waiting for traditional procedures.
...It’s worth noting here that the term backlog is almost certainly misapplied – at least if you’re using historic references to the security clearance process as context. FBI personnel aren’t sitting on stacks of unworked cases as was the case back in 2018, when pending cases reached over 725,000 at the Office of Personnel Management. Trump’s team suggested circumventing the FBI background investigation process initially when he won the election, and then decided to move forward with the traditional process. Some senior personnel the president likely intends to offer interim clearances to may have been submitted to the FBI just days prior to his election.
While the first Trump administration had its issues with classified information, it’s also responsible for ushering in the first era of the Trusted Workforce 2.0 security clearance reform effort – the most comprehensive security clearance reform effort since the security clearance system was created in World War II. ...
I've held a security clearance and been a reference for many others - it can be a real pain and a real hit or miss. You might never hear from an investigator. And I'm on the fence about this action. Yeah, I think it's crucial to have people in power positions who don't have vulnerabilities which, inadvertently or otherwise, could do any damage to this country.
Then again, people who have been fully 'vetted' seem to do whatever the hell they want nowadays, so...
Malley is an Obama stooge. He obviously was authorized by Biden to act as he sees appropriate. But pressure from Republican Congressmen and Senators forced this action.
— MICHAEL ANTOUN (@antoun_michael) July 8, 2023
...maybe we need to reassess what constitutes a 'security risk.'
Or maybe - stay with me here - we urgently need to reassess who assesses the risk.
Sure. 'Unvetted' with a temporary security clearance is terrifying and unprecedented for administration officials who have jobs to do and need them to do it.
I can't imagine why Trump would do such a thing.
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