Senators question White House on security clearances for Flynn and another Trump adviser

Four Democratic senators have charged in a series of letters that the appointment of Michael Flynn as Donald Trump’s national security adviser “might have jeopardised national security” and demanded information on why seemingly obvious red flags were overlooked in his vetting for the position.

The senators also questioned the granting of a

top secret security clearance to Sebastian Gorka, a former editor at the Breitbart website who is a senior adviser to Trump. The senators accused Gorka of not noting on his US citizenship application that he had belonged to a neo-Nazi group in his native Hungary.

“Portions of the White House’s security clearance process have experienced breakdowns since the beginning of the new administration,” the four ­senators, all members of the Homeland Security Committee, wrote in a series of letters, which were addressed to Defence Secretary James Mattis,

FBI Director James Comey and Marcia Lee Kelly, director of management and administration at the White House.