A group of House Democrats want to know if first daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump concealed knowledge of her husband’s meetings with Russian officials when she was applying for a security clearance, The Hill reads.
The lawmakers are asking the FBI to conduct a review of whether President Trump’s older daughter omitted information from her security clearance application when she joined the administration as an unpaid White House adviser.
The security clearance forms ask whether applicants or any member of their immediate families in the past seven years had any contact with a foreign government or its representatives. Deliberately omitting facts can result in up to five years in prison.
“Lack of candor, particularly regarding contacts with Russian officials, has been a significant issue for the Trump administration,” a group of 22 lawmakers wrote in a letter to the FBI that was spearheaded by Representative Don Beyer.
Reports emerged last week that Ivanka’s brother, Donald Trump Jr., and her husband, now-White House adviser Jared Kushner, met with a Russian lawyer claiming to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton during last year’s campaign.
Trump Jr. agreed to meet with the lawyer after being told by an intermediary that the information was part of the Russian government’s support for then-candidate Donald Trump.
Kushner has said through his lawyer that he only briefly attended the meeting at the request of Trump Jr.
And in May, The Washington Post reported that Kushner met with Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, to discuss possibly setting up a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin.
The lawmakers questioned whether Ivanka Trump disclosed her husband’s meetings with the Russians or if she accurately provided information about her own foreign contacts.
“We are concerned that Ivanka Trump may have engaged in similar deception,” the letter states. “The high standard to which we hold public servants, particularly senior advisers to the President of the United States, requires that these questions be raised, and promptly answered.”
Kushner has submitted updates to his original application for a security clearance to reflect contacts with foreign officials, including more than 100 calls or meetings mostly during the presidential transition. Beyer previously called for the revocation of Kushner’s security clearance following the report of his meeting with Kislyak to set up a secret communications channel.
Be the first to comment