Tricia Newbold, a longtime member of the White House Security Office, is seeking whistleblower protection after being disciplined on the heels of protesting a supervisor’s decision to grant a top-secret clearance to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, a report said Wednesday.
Ms. Newbold filed a whistleblower complaint with the federal government in light of being recently suspended without pay for two weeks by her supervisor, Carl Kline, NBC News reported.
A veteran of the office for 18 years, Ms. Newbold was disciplined for failure to supervise, failure to follow instructions and defiance of authority, according to an official explanation obtained by the network.
Her complaint alleging retaliation claims she was suspended for challenging Mr. Kline’s “reckless security judgments,” however, including specifically his decision to award top-secret clearances to Mr. Kushner and more than two dozen other incoming members of the Trump administration despite complaints mounted by Ms. Newbold and another career specialist, the outlet reported.
Ms. Newbold’s complaint alleges she repeatedly raised concerns with Mr. Kline, a former Pentagon employee who joined the administration in May 2017, about granting a security clearance to an unnamed applicant that two of the network’s sources have identified as Mr. Kushner, the report said.
On July 18, 2017, Ms. Newbold warned Mr. Kline about “credible,” “potential derogatory information” that could impact the applicant’s pending security clearance, but he shrugged off her concerns and declined to take the issue into consideration, she recalled in the complaint, according to the report.
Ms. Newbold later “questioned why we were treating this individual any differently than we would any other individual,” the report quoted from the complaint. Mr. Kline replied that “he would not address this matter further,” and, as recalled by Ms. Newbold, “advised I should ’watch myself.’”
Mr. Kline ultimately overruled Ms. Newbold and another White House security special more than 30 times to grant top-secret clearances to dozens of questionable applicants like Mr. Kushner, the report said.
Ms. Newbold was set to return to work Thursday following a two-week unpaid suspension, according to the report. She filed a complaint with the government agency that handles whistleblower issues, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and has previously raised her concerns about Mr. Kline with the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maryland Democrat, the report said.
“We don’t comment on personnel issues,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told NBC News.
Mr. Kushner, a 38-year-old former real estate developer, married the president’s oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, in 2009. He later served on Mr. Trump’s election campaign prior to subsequently joining his administration in early 2017.
Mr. Kushher held an interim top-level security clearance prior to being downgraded to the “secret” level in February 2018. He eventually received a permanent top-secret clearance in May 2018 – roughly 16 months into his tenure as Mr. Trump’s senior adviser – following a routine but lengthy background check process that probed his business, financial and foreign affairs, The Washington Post reported at the time.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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