that donald trump had in mind at that time. annie, why was jared cu kushner s security clearance held up and why did the white house counsel object ultimately? why were security officials objecting to him getting full security clearance? we don t know the details as to why the cia and other agencies raised questions. but there have been problems with jared s security clearance from the outset of this administration. if you remember in the first forms he filled out, he failed to list meetings with russian officials on it. you re supposed to disclose all meetings with foreign government officials, and he didn t. and he blamed it on a clerical error at the time. but so we don t know exactly what they objected to, but we know there have been questions about his the kushner company, his family s real estate business and their dealings and business dealings with foreign governments. and the bigger question here, though, is, again, why the president, ivanka and jared kushner s lawyer, w
in their view stone walls requests for information about the new york times report that the president ordered officials to give cukushner security clearance. it is one written by white house counsel about this issue and that the white house hasn t responded multiple times. i asked them abiliout that. it is clearly one more issue raising tensions wean this white house and new house majority. tonight the white house now defending president trump s power to grant a top secret clearance and top white house adviser over the objections of career intelligence officials who raised concerns about his background check. was the president involved in kushner s security clearance process? we don t discuss security clearances. i m not going to discuss my own. i will tell you that the president has the absolute right to do what was described.
steph? my goodness. all right. i want to bring my team in here. ken dilanian, who covers intelligence and national security for nbc news. rick tyler, a republican strategist and cofounder of foundry strategies. jason johnson, politics editor at theroot.com. josh gottheimer, a democratic congressman from my home state of new jersey. which means, sorry, guys, josh is getting all of the time this morning. and malcolm nance, executive editor of the terror asymmetrics project. ken, i ve got to go to you. you wrote that nbc news article in january that said, cukushner article got dinged out of the gate excuse me, his application got dinged out of the gate. walk us through why it was rejected and really, the path over the last year, because i remember, when he did get security clearance. i remember sitting in this chair and saying, people need to dial it back. if you re so concerned that jared is up to no good, he would never have gotten clearance if there was so much bad stuff there. may
where following christie s advice he s able to control the situation and does pretty well. trump thinks he does pretty well and calls christie and thanks him. he says i can t thank you enough. there s several anecdotes about that. whenever there s trouble in trump world, trump can call christie and christie is the adult in the room because everybody else is a bunch of ud yac idiots. i feel like you re using his language there. you spent a lot of time studying the man. this is definitely not surprising that he really rips jared curb nekushner s tad. let s listen to a little bit of that. would you separate your experience if your father was put in jail from the prosecutor who put him in jail? if it my father was guilty. i would. mr. cukushner pled guilty. he admitted the crimes. so what am i supposed to do as a prosecutor? if a guy hires a prostitute to
relationship with his close friend tweeting that stone didn t work for me. another friend of the president s is out with a new book claiming that he put an end to the russia investigation when he fired michael flynn. it is shared by cukushner. he said this russia thing is far from over. the president responded, what do you mean? i fired flynn, it s over. he added that s right. firing flynn ends is whole russia thing. roger stone last week, paul manafort, michael cohen, are you concerned, is the president concerned as many and more of his associates are brought into this investigation and guilty in this investigation that this presidency is in danger?