Carl Kline, a former White House official who granted questionable security clearances to Jared Kushner and others, has been ordered to defy a House Oversight Committee subpoena and not show up to a hearing on Tuesday.
The Washington Post reports: “The move appears to be the latest effort by the Trump administration to push back against congressional inquiries of the White House, which have proliferated since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in January. White House deputy counsel Michael M. Purpura wrote a letter Monday asking the former security director, Carl Kline, not to show up as the committee had requested. Kline is now working at the Defense Department.”
The subpoena for Kline to appear was prompted by White House personnel security whistleblower, Tricia Newbold, who told the House Oversight Committee that Kline overruled security clearance denials by career employees for 25 individuals in Trump’s administration.
From the committee’s memo: “Ms. Newbold explained that, starting in 2018, she began to keep a list of White House employees whose denials were overturned. Her list eventually grew to 25 officials, including two current senior White House officials, as well as contractors and individuals throughout different components of the Executive Office of the President. According to Ms. Newbold, these individuals had a wide range of serious disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct.”
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were among those named by Newbold, according to reports.
The NYT reported: ‘Ms. Newbold, who has worked in the White House for 18 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, said she chose to speak to the Oversight Committee after attempts to raise concerns with her superiors and the White House counsel went nowhere, according to the committee staff’s account. “I feel that right now this is my last hope to really bring the integrity back into our office,” she said, according to a summary of her March 23 interview with the committee’s staff distributed on Monday.’
