Trump officials to receive immediate clearances and easier FBI vetting
Trump officials to receive immediate clearances and easier FBI vetting
Exclusive: president-elect’s team planning for background checks to occur only after administration takes over bureau
Summary
Donald Trump’s transition team plans to grant sweeping security clearances to cabinet picks before traditional FBI background checks, delaying vetting until the new administration takes over the bureau and installs its own officials.
This move could bypass FBI scrutiny and delay classified briefings until Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
The approach reflects Trump’s distrust of the FBI, rooted in its role during the Russia investigation, and mirrors past controversies like Jared Kushner’s delayed clearance, which Trump overrode despite FBI and CIA concerns.
Critics warn this could undermine vetting and create potential security risks.
It's 2024, Democrats are fiscally responsible and tough on Russia while Republicans are subversive deviants with criminal tendencies and Russian leanings
I feel like I was born in a virtual universe contrived by the telling of a weird joke that will cease to exist as soon as the punchline arrives.
If the security has exceptions, it's not security.
The president should not have the power to forego the clearance process to begin with.
President always had that capability, as head of the executive branch. It wasn't used often (dire situations may apply, like needing to get an expert cleared quickly to be brought into a highly sensitive project -- in this case the request is likely following a chain-of-command and the individual likely has a positive public or professional reputation that proceeds them), because it's shady as fuck and everyone knows it. Certainly not on a large scale for an incoming cabinet.
But ultimately, security clearance is on the approval of the president, just delegated through the state department.
Basically he already knows his picks are susceptible to foreign influence, because many are already under foreign influence, so background checks would just complicate things. He doesn't care about protecting national secrets as evidenced by him stealing them and storing them in his resort without much security.
We get that HE doesn't care, but why tf doesn't America? Why would these vetting institutions just waive the standard?
A lot of us do but are stuck in a state of learned helplessness.
What are we supposed to do, anyway? We don't share France's strong history of activism. Every large protest in the US has been suppressed and oppressed within my lifetime. And we're wage slaves. We can't leave work or we lose our income, our health insurance, leading to loss of our housing and everything else.
We're slaves. People just have been lulled into this idea that they're not.
He almost certainly didn't just store them. There were folio's with missing classified documents. He sold US national secrets.
Their foreign connections are probably part of why he chose them.
Americans deserve the damage this administration will do to our security. Americans deserve the economic hit we are about to take. Americans deserve the loss of freedoms we are suffering. Americans deserve the lies and gaslighting and false piety and manufactured consent being pumped at us on these screens. Americans deserve the further entrenchment of this new ruling feudal class. Americans deserve to watch the oligarchs flout the same laws that bind everyone else. Americans deserve the avoidable illnesses and untreated suffering that the rest of the world is organized to treat. Americans deserve all the violence that a self-serving authoritarian regime always needs to sustain itself.
Don’t ever let your drooling, bigoted, cowardly compatriots forget that we chose all this. The fuckers didn’t even need to undermine the election. We Americans are stupid enough to just hand our own wellbeing over to these rich assholes willingly.
As humans living in a country called The United States of America, what The People deserve is a form of government that protects its people from lies and disinformation. In the twenty first century, that requires more regulation than the founders of the country had imagined or provisioned for in The Constitution.
The idea that a Free Society is one with less government involvement is a lie. Government exists, ideally, to protect and ensure fair opportunity for The People. The government of the US has, since its inception, always existed to ensure opportunity for the wealthy land and business owners who don't want to pay taxes.
No person deserves what you've claimed. The People have been lied to. They've been manipulated and spoken down to. Propaganda and brain washing is not the fault of The People. "Stupidity" (your words) is no excuse for a representative government to take advantage of The People.
Do Not Blame The People.
Blame the founders, blame the courts, blame the corporations, blame Congress, blame Wall Street, blame Reagan, blame Trump, blame Biden. If anyone deserves illness, it's this group.
What The People of America deserve is a government that represents and works for them. One that ensures equal rights and equity for all. One that earns the trust of The People so when they tell you something good or bad is happening, you believe them. Humans deserve a life free of undeserved obstacles and one free of blatant, verifiably false lies benefiting corporations and political leaders. And, we deserve a free and robust Press.
I second this. I don't want my government to hurt anyone, even people who are ignorant or hateful.
I certainly didn't vote for what's coming, and millions of others didn't either. Countries that rely on us didn't vote for it. Our environment didn't vote for it. And I'm sure most of the people that were duped into voting for it didn't really want what we're going to get either. Some dirtbags probably did, but I think they're still a minority, and I'd still rather those people have a chance to become good people than for them to suffer. I'd still want them to have access to free education and universal healthcare and a full social safety net if I had the power to give it to them.
We won't be able to walk back a lot of what might happen. We could lose millions of acres of public land to private interest. Untold destruction could destroy our remaining ecosystems irreparably. We've got anti-vaxxers that could kill thousands to millions. We've got people that want to let Palestinians, Ukrainians, and Kurds die. That stuff can't be undone, and those people and our planet don't deserve it because some con artists did a great job on propaganda this last half century.
This is just a slow coup by foreign actors at this point, isn't it?
Yes, and they've succeeded.
Can't get Russian operatives into the White House if you don't break a few eggs.
dont ya just feel safer already
Does "blackmailed and owned by a dictator" not count as "foreign donation"?
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you extreme vetting.
Does extreme vetting come with knee pads, or do candidates have to bring their own?
I read "inmate"