Lost our ability to be shocked

Trump's former acting attorney general: 'Have we lost our ability to be shocked?'

By REBECCA MORIN

Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general who was fired by Donald Trump in 2017, accused the president on Friday of "cavalierly lying" about instructing his former chief of staff John Kelly to give Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance.

"Hard to know which is more dangerous—jeopardizing our most sensitive national security information or so cavalierly lying about it. Have we lost our ability to be shocked?" Yates tweeted.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Trump had ordered Kelly to authorize a top-secret security clearance for Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, in May 2018. Kelly, along with former White House counsel Don McGahn and U.S. intelligence officials, had objected to giving Kushner a top-secret clearance, according to The Times, which said the full scope of their concerns is not known.

In an internal memo at the time, Kelly wrote that he had been "ordered" to grant Kushner that type of clearance.

However, the president in January told the Times that he that he had no role in Kushner being granted the clearance. In addition, Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser, the president's daughter and Kushner's wife, said in an interview with ABC News in February that her father “had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance.”

Yates, who was acting attorney general for 10 days before being fired by Trump for refusing to defend his controversial travel ban, is one of the first former top officials to speak out against Trump's activity in the report.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, on Thursday threatened to subpoena the White House for information related to its protocol for distributing security clearances following the report.