Trump’s team skips FBI background checks for some Cabinet picks
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning say.
Trump and his allies believe the FBI system is slow and plagued with issues that could stymie the president-elect’s plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans said. Critics say the intrusive background checks sometimes turn up embarrassing information used to inflict political damage.
Given Don's prior experience during trump 1.0 it wasn't surprising he'd be reluctant to allow his picks to be exposed to FBI scrutiny.
Officials rejected Jared Kushner for top secret security clearance, but were overruled
Kushner's was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top-secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said.
Jared Kushner was rejected for a top-secret clearance by two career security specialists, but their supervisor overruled them and approved him, sources say.
www.nbcnews.com
All of which puts this in the proper perspective.
Border czar Tom Homan didn’t receive normal background check during bribery probe
In early January, several days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, a Justice Department lawyer passed an envelope across a wide desk to a top Trump transition official. Enclosed was a bombshell, typed up in a one-page summary, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
As he read the contents of the envelope, the official, Emil Bove (the guy who would later tell DoJ subordinates to ignore court orders), closed his eyes and grimaced, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive case. It revealed that Tom Homan — at that time, a frequent companion of Trump’s on the campaign trail who had publicly boasted he would be joining Trump’s administration to lead his immigrant deportation strategy — was the subject of an ongoing bribery investigation. Undercover FBI agents posing as private contractors had recorded him accepting $50,000 in cash in exchange for what they believed was Homan’s vow to help get border enforcement contracts in the new Trump administration.
A small group of career lawyers at the Justice Department felt an urgency to share this sensitive information with the president-elect’s team as soon as possible, hoping to head off potential embarrassment and a security clearance problem before Trump picked his future Cabinet and top appointees.
President-elect Trump initially balked at submitting names of likely nominees to the FBI for background checks, a basic step intended to flag possible financial conflicts or ethical problems.
www.ms.now
Heck, when you pick a nominee to be AG who was investigated for sex trafficking (wait..WHAT!), and a nominee for border czar who was investigated for taking a bribe (wait...WHAT!), the last thing you want is to have those nominees go through the normal background check process.
After all, loyalists like Pam and Kash had yet to be installed in key DoJ posts. Meaning that for the folks doing a check on Homan, the tape of him taking $50K in cash was..........let's just say it was "problematic."
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a White House briefing that “Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to” despite an internal DOJ document stating that he did.
"These aren't the drones you're looking for, move along," says Karoline.
