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RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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Some on Mueller’s Team See Their Findings as More Damaging for Trump Than Barr Revealed
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Attorney General William P. Barr has shown hints of frustration with how the rollout of the special counsel’s chief findings has unfolded.CreditCreditSarah Silbiger/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Mr. Barr has said he would move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needed time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.
However, the special counsel’s office never asked Mr. Barr to release the summaries soon after he received the report, a person familiar with the investigation said. And the Justice Department quickly determined that the summaries contain sensitive information, like classified material, secret grand-jury testimony and information related to current federal investigations that must remain confidential, according to two government officials.
Mr. Barr was also wary of departing from Justice Department practice not to disclose derogatory details in closing an investigation, according to two government officials familiar with Mr. Barr’s thinking. They pointed to the decision by James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to harshly criticize Hillary Clinton in 2016 while announcing that he was recommending no charges in the inquiry into her email practices.
The officials and others interviewed declined to flesh out why some of the special counsel’s investigators viewed their findings as potentially more damaging for the president than Mr. Barr explained, although the report is believed to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation. It was unclear how much discussion Mr. Mueller and his investigators had with senior Justice Department officials about how their findings would be made public. It was also unclear how widespread the vexation is among the special counsel team, which included 19 lawyers, about 40 F.B.I. agents and other personnel.
At the same time, Mr. Barr and his advisers have expressed their own frustrations about Mr. Mueller and his team. Mr. Barr and other Justice Department officials believe the special counsel’s investigators fell short of their task by declining to decide whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed the inquiry, according to the two government officials. After Mr. Mueller made no judgment on the obstruction matter, Mr. Barr stepped in to declare that he had cleared Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.
Representatives for the Justice Department and the special counsel declined to comment on Wednesday on views inside both Mr. Mueller’s office and the Justice Department. They pointed to departmental regulations requiring Mr. Mueller to file a confidential report to the attorney general detailing prosecution decisions and to Mr. Barr’s separate vow to send a redacted version of that report to Congress. Under the regulations, Mr. Barr can publicly release as much of the document as he deems appropriate.
A debate over how the special counsel’s conclusions are represented has played out in public as well in recent weeks, with Democrats in Congress accusing Mr. Barr of intervening to color the outcome of the investigation in the president’s favor.
In his letter to Congress outlining the report’s chief conclusions, Mr. Barr said that Mr. Mueller found no conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference. While Mr. Mueller made no decision on his other main question, whether the president illegally obstructed the inquiry, he explicitly stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump.
Mr. Mueller’s decision to skip a prosecutorial judgment “leaves it to the attorney general to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime,” Mr. Barr wrote. He and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, decided that the evidence was insufficient to conclude that Mr. Trump had committed an obstruction offense.
The attorney general is preparing the report of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for Congress.CreditTom Brenner for The New York Times
Mr. Barr has come under criticism for sharing so little. But according to officials familiar with the attorney general’s thinking, he and his aides limited the details they revealed because they were worried about wading into political territory. Mr. Barr and his advisers expressed concern that if they included derogatory information about Mr. Trump while clearing him, they would face a storm of criticism like what Mr. Comey endured in the Clinton investigation.
Legal experts attacked Mr. Comey at the time for violating Justice Department practice to keep confidential any negative information about anyone uncovered during investigations. The practice exists to keep from unfairly sullying people’s reputations without giving them a chance to respond in court.
Mr. Rosenstein cited the handling of the Clinton case in a memo the White House used to rationalize Mr. Trump’s firing of Mr. Comey.
Though it was not clear what findings the special counsel’s investigators viewed as troubling for Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr has suggested that Mr. Mueller may have found evidence of malfeasance in investigating possible obstruction of justice. “The report sets out evidence on both sides of the question,” Mr. Barr wrote in his March 24 letter.
Mr. Mueller examined Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the investigation, including his firing of Mr. Comey and his attempt to oust Mr. Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to install a loyalist to oversee the inquiry.
The fallout from Mr. Barr’s letter outlining the Russia investigation’s main findings overshadowed his intent to make public as much of the entire report as possible, a goal he has stressed since his confirmation hearing in January. He reiterated to lawmakers on Friday that he wanted both Congress and the public to read the report and said that the department would by mid-April furnish a version with sensitive material blacked out. He offered to testify on Capitol Hill soon after turning over the report.
Mr. Barr, who took office in February, has shown flashes of frustration over how the unveiling of the investigation’s findings have unfolded. In his follow-up letter to lawmakers on Friday, he chafed at how the news media and some lawmakers had characterized his March 24 letter.
Mr. Barr and Mr. Mueller have been friends for 30 years, and Mr. Barr said during his confirmation hearing in January that he trusted Mr. Mueller to conduct an impartial investigation. He said he told Mr. Trump that Mr. Mueller was a “straight shooter who should be dealt with as such.” Mr. Mueller served as the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division when Mr. Barr was attorney general under George Bush, and their families are friends.
Mr. Barr’s promises of transparency have done little to appease Democrats who control the House. The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to let its chairman use a subpoena to try to compel Mr. Barr to hand over a full copy of the Mueller report and its underlying evidence to Congress. The chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has not said when he will use the subpoena, but made clear on Wednesday that he did not trust Mr. Barr’s characterization of what Mr. Mueller’s team found.
“The Constitution charges Congress with holding the president accountable for alleged official misconduct,” Mr. Nadler said. “That job requires us to evaluate the evidence for ourselves — not the attorney general’s summary, not a substantially redacted synopsis, but the full report and the underlying evidence.”
Republicans, who have embraced Mr. Barr’s letter clearing Mr. Trump, have accused the Democrats of trying to prolong the cloud over his presidency and urged them to move on.
Mr. Trump has fully embraced Mr. Barr’s version of events. For days, he has pronounced the outcome of the investigation a “complete and total exoneration” and called for the Justice Department and his allies on Capitol Hill to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for opening the inquiry.
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Trump taxes been under audit for 4 years 
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Jared Kushner identified as senior White House official whose security clearance was denied by career officials
Ashley Parker
The senior White House official whose security clearance was denied last year because of concerns about foreign influence, private business interests and personal conduct is presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with documents and testimony provided to the House Oversight Committee.
Kushner was identified only as “Senior White House Official 1” in committee documents released this week describing the testimony of Tricia Newbold, a whistleblower in the White House’s personnel security office who said she and another career employee determined that Kushner had too many “significant disqualifying factors” to receive a clearance.
Their decision was overruled by Carl Kline, the political appointee who then headed the office, according to Newbold’s interview with committee staff.
The new details about the internal debate over Kushner’s clearance revives questions about the severity of the issues flagged in his background investigation and Kushner’s access to government secrets.
Last year, President Trump directed his then-chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to give Kushner a top-secret security clearance, despite concerns expressed by career intelligence officers.
[Trump demanded top-secret security clearance for Jared Kushner last year despite concerns of John Kelly and intelligence officials]
Security clearance experts said the issues raised in Kushner’s background investigation were significant.
“It’s a big deal,” said David Kris, a senior Justice Department official during the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and a founder of the consulting firm Culper Partners.
“The kinds of concerns that she mentioned are very serious,” he said. “Senior staff at the White House — and particularly relatives of the U.S. president — are incredibly attractive targets for our adversaries seeking to gather intelligence or exert covert influence.”
White House officials declined to comment Wednesday. An attorney for Kushner referred questions to the White House.
In an interview Monday with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Kushner said he could not comment on the White House security clearance process, but dismissed the idea that he posed a risk to national security.
“But I can say over the last two years that I’ve been here, I’ve been accused of all different types of things, and all of those things have turned out to be false,” he said.
Kushner’s legal team issued a statement in February saying that “White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone.”
Kushner, who is a senior adviser to Trump and married to his daughter Ivanka, was unable to obtain a permanent security clearance for more than a year as his background investigation dragged on — a situation that troubled senior White House officials.
Newbold told the House Oversight Committee that Kushner’s background investigation raised concerns about foreign influence, outside business interests and personal conduct, according to a document released by the committee.
The specific issues flagged in his background check remain unknown. But The Washington Post reported last year that foreign officials had privately discussed ways to try to manipulate Kushner by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience.
Among the nations that discussed ways to influence Kushner were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, current and former officials said.
Kushner also came to his post with complex business holdings and a family company facing significant debt, including more than $1 billion owed on a Manhattan office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue.
In 2016, at the same time Kushner was helping to run Trump’s presidential campaign, he and company officials spoke with potential foreign investors about becoming partners in the building, including investors in China and Qatar.
Those deals never materialized. In August, Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian company, announced it was purchasing the office tower.
A person familiar with Kushner’s security clearance, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters, noted that Kushner was interviewed by both the special counsel and congressional lawmakers investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.
“Not one allegation has been proven, and no one has in any way been able to show any foreign influence or improper business investments,” the person said.
While Kushner’s security clearance was pending, he held an interim top-secret clearance that at one point also gave him access to some of the government’s most sensitive materials, including the president’s daily intelligence brief, The Post has reported.
Last February, his clearance was downgraded to secret as part of an effort by Kelly to rein in the number of White House officials without permanent clearances who had access to highly classified material.
Trump then personally directed Kelly to give Kushner a top-secret clearance — a move that made Kelly so uncomfortable that he documented the request in writing, according to people familiar with the situation.
As president, Trump has the authority to grant such clearances. But congressional Democrats have raised questions about the risks that could be overlooked by such a decision.
“It shows a disregard for the national security of the country if the professionals in the intelligence community believed Jared Kushner shouldn’t get a security clearance, and the president overrode that decision to give him one,” said House Intelligence Committee member Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.).
Kushner’s permanent top-secret clearance was granted May 1, according to internal White House personnel logs obtained by The Post. The notation was made by someone with the initials “CLK,” the same as Newbold’s then-boss, Kline.
On the same day, Ivanka Trump also obtained her clearance, the logs show.
Newbold told the House Oversight Committee that Kline had overruled her denial of Kushner’s clearance. She said he did so without addressing the disqualifying factors raised by the staff and merely noting that “the activities occurred prior to Federal service,” according to a committee document.
An attorney for Kline declined to comment.
In a memo Monday, Republican staff members on the House Oversight Committee said that Newbold did not have “direct knowledge” about why Kline overruled her recommendation to deny a clearance to “Official 1.” They also described Newbold as a disgruntled employee.
In her testimony, Newbold said that when Kushner applied for an even higher level of clearance, another agency contacted her to determine “how we rendered a favorable adjudication,” an inquiry she said reflected that agency’s “serious concerns.”
The agency was not identified in committee documents. The CIA is the agency responsible for granting White House officials access to government information classified above top secret.
In all, Newbold alleged that 25 individuals have been given clearances or access to national security information since 2018 despite concerns about ties to foreign influence, conflicts of interests, questionable or criminal conduct, financial problems or drug abuse.
[White House whistleblower says 25 security clearance denials were reversed during Trump administration]
Newbold, who worked on security clearance matters in the White House for 18 years under Republican and Democratic administrations, said she reluctantly came forward as a whistleblower over concern for national security.
“I would not be doing a service to myself, my country, or my children if I sat back knowing that the issues that we have could impact national security,” she told the committee, according to its summary of her interview.
Newbold said that she faced retaliation internally after she raised concerns about the clearance process. At one point, she has alleged, Kline moved clearance-related files to a shelf beyond the reach of Newbold, who has a rare form of dwarfism.
The House Oversight Committee’s Democratic majority voted this week to issue a subpoena to Kline to testify about his role in approving the security clearances. The panel’s vote was one of the first moves in the Democratic-controlled House to compel the White House to provide information about the Trump inner circle.
The White House has said that the Oversight Committee has no authority to question the president on security-clearance matters and has refused to provide the committee with documents.
Republicans on the panel have attacked Cummings’s inquiry, saying that he has politicized the discussion of the clearance issue and that he “cherry-picked” excerpts of the closed-door interview with Newbold. They complained that GOP members were unable to attend because they were told about it only the previous afternoon.
Newbold’s lawyer, Edward Passman, said Republican staffers were present for the hearing and aggressively questioned Newbold.
Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
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