FBI Whistleblower Says FBI Intentionally Blocking Security Clearances for Trump Officials - The Last Refuge
It should not come as a surprise to see the same methods deployed against President Trump in 2024 that were used by the FBI in 2016. The difference is now that President Trump understands the full power of his office in the security clearance process and ...
The FBI just does the background investigations. They don't issue clearances.
FBI cannot be trusted anyway.
Trumps background checks make the FB LIES checks look like kindergarten projects. He has his own corperate intelligence apparatus.
You are correct - it does not have anything to do with clearances other than gathering info from many agencies to ensure someone is eligible to go through the clearance process. Eligible = things like no felonies, no domestic violence - simple things that would show up in a standard employment background check. Those things can also be used in the actual investigation to see if the applicant will mention them or lie about them.
Before 2019 the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) did the clearance investigations once a person was initially vetted. Now the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) does them. I'm not a fan of OPM because of the number of times my info was stolen in the many hacks they suffered. Dumbasses.
https://www.dcsa.mil/Personnel-Security/Background-Investigations-for-Applicants/Investigations-Clearance-Process/
A big HOWEVER should be here though. The FBI can say a person is not eligible to go through the clearance process. Trump can bypass that by having background investigations performed elsewhere. He had to do that with Kushner because of the many conflicts of interest he had. The FBI was trying to do the same here but Trump knows better now.
This line in the headlined story is possibly the stupidest one I've seen (it comes from MSN of course):
Some cabinet positions? I can't think of a single Cabinet Secretary that would not require a clearance. Something as simple as a call between POTUS, another world leader, and a cabinet secretary would be highly classified. Nearly, if not every govt agency has some info that is classified - certainly the cabinet-level agencies - and would thus require the head of the agency to have the classification necessary to perform their duties in advising the POTUS.
Note - govt severely over-classifies a ton of stuff. This argument doesn't mean that the info they have actually needs to be classified, but rest assured it will be.
They can't stop any of it.