Jared Kushner’s lawyers say there’s an innocent explanation for why his first security clearance application omitted his meetings with several Russians, including Sergey Kislyak and Natalia Veselnitskaya: A member of Kushner’s staff hit send on his form too early. But the thing is, there isn’t one “send button” for this kind of security clearance form. There are 28.
Kushner’s lawyers say he mistakenly left meetings with the Russians off his security forms twice
But the form makes that really hard to do.
According to a Yahoo News report, Kushner filed his first SF-86 (a government document to amend his security clearance) in January and omitted any meetings with foreign government officials. In May, he submitted a revised security clearance form with more than 100 foreign names, including a meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but still did not include the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya revealed in Donald Trump Jr.’s emails.
Kushner’s lawyers told Yahoo that leaving the foreign names out of the initial submission was a mistake. As Yahoo investigative reporter Michael Isikoff writes:
His lawyers have said this was inadvertent and that a member of his staff had prematurely hit the “send” button for the form before it was completed. Within twelve hours, they have said, Kushner notified the FBI that he would make amendments and disclose his meetings with foreign officials.
CBS News reported Friday that the Veselnitskaya meeting was later conveyed to the FBI and included in a third version of the form before July. But still, the idea that it could have originally been left out accidentally because a form was sent too early seems absurd given how the form works. Susan Hennessey, managing editor at Lawfare, tweeted that e-filing the report requires entering a password or clicking through a dialogue box 28 times.
The process for submitting the SF-86 is spelled out in the National Background Investigations Bureau instruction document, which outlines steps including registering with an “e-Qip password” and submitting a medical release. (OPM and GSA have been contacted for comment, but have not responded.)
US Office of Personnel Management
It may be possible that a staff member hit those 28 buttons prematurely, but it sure seems fishy — as have so many Trump-Russia related moments. And at every point when suspicious episodes have come up, the Trump administration has asked people to believe in a harmless explanation for a meeting, or an incomplete form. These very well could be innocent mistakes, but at this point, there seem to be a lot of them.
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