After filling an entire election cycle with “Lock Her Up!” chants over Hillary Clinton’s personal email use, Donald Trump is denying knowing anything about allegations that his daughter and son-in-law have used personal email accounts for official White House business.
“I know nothing about it,” Trump told reporters Friday on the South Lawn of the White House, 24 hours after Rep. Elijah Cummings queried the White House counsel on the issue. “I’ve never heard that. I’ve never heard about it.”
We take that to mean that either a) Trump doesn’t read, which has been widely reported; b) it wasn’t reported on Fox, his fake news bubble of choice; c) he doesn’t speak to his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone; d) Cipollone briefed him on it but didn’t include cool pictures of Javanka using WhatsApp and taking selfies with MBS, so Trump forgot; e) Trump lied; or f) all of the above.
Remember in January when Trump told the New York Times that he had absolutely nothing to do with approval of Kushner’s sketchy top-secret security clearance? “I don’t think I have the authority to do that. … But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it. … I was never involved with the security. … I don’t want to get involved in that stuff. … I have the right to do it, but I never thought it was necessary, Maggie [Haberman]. I never thought it was necessary.”
Then the Times reported in February that Trump had personally approved Kushner’s clearance over the objections of career intelligence officials, and then several days later Kellyanne Conway started peddling Trump’s “absolute right” to approve Kushner’s clearance. Then we learned he reportedly also interfered in order to get Ivanka’s clearance approved.
Yeah. Well, just like the White House is stonewalling House Oversight on Javanka’s use of private email and other digital issues, it is also stonewalling the panel on its inquiry into Javanka’s security clearances.