Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty; Riccardo Savi/Getty
Meghan McCaindid not mince words on Friday aboutIvanka TrumpfollowingaNew York Timesreportthat PresidentDonald Trumpdirectly intervened in the matter ofIvanka’s husband’s security clearance— a revelation that, if true, directly contradicts repeated Trump family statements to the contrary.
For example,in an interview with ABC Newslast month, Ivanka said her dad “had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance, zero.”
According to theTimes, the president’s move 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 Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.”
The question of Kushner’s pending security clearance drew scrutiny from the start amid larger concerns about the president employing two relatives in the White House, which critics say too closely blends the personal and political.
But the president has denied any role in the matter. As theTimesexplained Friday, he has the authority to grant security clearances to anyone, though as a matter of propriety it is usually not done directly.
“I was never involved with the security,” the president told theTimesin January. “I know that there was issues back and forth about security for numerous people, actually. But I don’t want to get involved in that stuff.”
In a statement to PEOPLE on Friday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said, “We don’t comment on security clearances.”
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner’s attorney, said in his own statement, in part, that Kushner’s clearance “was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone.”
“In 2018, White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone,” Mirijanian said. “That was conveyed to the media at the time, and new stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time.”
Huntsman asked Ivanka then about questions over her and Kushner’s security clearance.
“I was, one, shocked that she was willing to answer it,” Huntsman said onThe View. “But, two, that she was so clearly [claiming] her father had zero involvement at all. …It’s the president putting his own interests above the security of this country when there are some very serious questions.”
McCain agreed.
McCain called the contradiction between Ivanka’s denial and theTimesreport “the first crack in her veneer.”
“I mean being caught lying on air is a different thing,” she said, noting longstanding reports that Ivanka is as image-conscious as her father — even “vociferously, intensely” so.
“One of the reasons I don’t like her is I don’t know what she’s saying,” McCain said. “To me, there never seems like there’s a real person in there.”
White House counselor Kellyanne Conwayreportedly defended Ivankaon Fox News on Friday, saying: “IfIvanka Trumpchose to comment, then she probably has knowledge that some of us do not have.”
source: people.com
