Jared Kushner is finally granted ‘top secret’ US security clearance after painful process

Jared Kushner has been granted permanent security clearance, renewing his access to sensitive intelligence and potentially paving the way for his return to a more active role in the White House.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law is presumed to have been granted a level of clearance known as Top Secret/SCI that would allow him to see the president’s daily security briefing and other closely guarded documents. He was stripped of that ability in February amid concerns that foreign governments were planning to manipulate him by exploiting his complex web of business ties.

The granting of security clearance potentially brings to an end a troubled patch for Kushner. A month after his security status was downgraded, it was revealed that the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, Robert Mueller, had taken an interest in Kushner’s business affairs, including his attempts to gain refinancing of his family’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan from foreign entities.

But the FBI’s decision to award him permanent security clearance, first reported by The New York Times, suggests that Kushner may have turned a corner. Lawyers were agreed that such permission was unlikely to have been given were he still in legal peril.

As a sign of Kushner’s new-found confidence in his position, his attorney Abbe Lowell appeared on CNN and disclosed that Kushner had been questioned by Mueller’s investigative team for a second time last month. Lowell was adamant that no financial matters had been on the agenda.

Instead, the lawyer said, the investigators stuck closely to the script of the Mueller investigation: “The topics were the appropriate topics.”