Although Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has never been cleared for permanent security clearance, he has been granted access to top secret information since he joined the White House.
Politico now reports that Kushner and other White House staffers who were able to access top secret information without permanent clearance will no longer be able to do so.
Kushner is not alone. All White House aides working on the highest-level interim clearances — at the Top Secret/SCI-level — were informed in a memo sent Friday that their clearances would be downgraded to the Secret level, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.
The SCI acronym stands for sensitive compartmentalized information, a category of information that comes from sensitive intelligence sources and must be walled off.
Like me, most of you are probably old enough to remember when Republicans fabricated an entire years-long controversy over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's alleged mishandling of classified information. As recently as last week, Trump and other attendees at the annual vacation bible revival for unemployable cranks (CPAC) led chants of "lock her up."
To this day, multiple congressional investigations and even an FBI investigation found no evidence that Clinton ever mishandled highly sensitive information, but we know for a fact that Kushner and numerous other staffers in Trump's White House, including his former staff secretary, were given access to highly classified material without permanent security clearance.
And why doesn't Jared Kushner have clearance?
Because he's compromised up to his eyeballs in shady financial and real-estate deals stretching from Moscow to Beijing. CNN reported last week that special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation is the primary reason Kushner was never cleared.
Kushner's application for a top-level security clearance has been held up for over a year in part because it cannot be completed while the special counsel's team continues to probe Kushner's contacts with Russians and his financial dealings with foreigners, the sources said. During that time, Kushner has been able to access the government's most sensitive secrets thanks to an interim security clearance. But that access could soon be cut off -- unless Trump steps in with a waiver.