Democrats launch inquiry into White House's use of security clearances

• Trump officials accused of ‘grave breaches of national security’
• Questions over Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn and Rob Porter

Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington and agencies
Wed 23 Jan 2019 19.37 GMT

A powerful House committee now led by Democrats has launched an investigation into the Trump administration’s use of security clearances, accusing the White House and the 2016 presidential transition team of “grave breaches” in the process that awards access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets.

The inquiry by the House oversight and reform committee, announced on Wednesday, takes direct aim at some of those closest to the president over the past two years, including the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and former White House aide Rob Porter.

The review also sets up one of the first potential fights between a Democrat-led House committee and a White House bracing for a number of investigations in the wake of last year’s midterm elections that eroded Republican control in Congress.

Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the oversight committee chairman, said in a letter to the White House that he was undertaking the investigation in response to “grave breaches of national security at the highest level of the Trump administration”.

“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,” he wrote.

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