The Information Security Presidency

I’d say the media’s collective decision in 2016 to make the Democratic candidate’s compliance with information security best practices is looking as sound as ever:

Jared Kushner’s application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him — but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. 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. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented — it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline’s arrival.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said the Trump White House attracted many people with untraditional backgrounds who had complicated financial and personal histories, some of which raised red flags.

Kushner’s FBI background check identified questions about his family’s business, his foreign contacts, his foreign travel and meetings he had during the campaign, the sources said, declining to be more specific.

There was no way to stop conservatives from pretending to be sincerely outraged about Hillary’s handling of classified information, but journalists didn’t need to pretend to believe them. https://t.co/qxyWNOPTK5

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 25, 2019

What’s worse is that I suspect some of them weren’t even pretending.