The White House just discovered and promptly suspended a major leaker after her story shot across the media landscape.
It should be noted that Tricia Newbold claims she is a whistleblower, not a leaker, and is fighting back with charges of her own.
The story she leaked concerned security clearances in the White House and more specifically Jared Kushner’s clearance.
The report claimed Jared had a hard time getting a security clearance and that a political appointee overruled career employees to give Kushner the clearance.
The media reacted as if this was the scandal of the century and while one may wonder how someone as inexperienced as Kushner is playing so critical a role in our government, the President has the right to give a clearance to whomever he wants.
That is the law and while the media ripped Kushner and Trump over the report they conveniuently left out the part that ultimately it is Trump’s call who gets access.
Not the career guys who were complaining to the media. From NBC:
A White House security specialist has been suspended without pay for defying her supervisor Carl Kline, less than a week after NBC News reported Kline approved Jared Kushner for top secret clearance over the objections of career staff.
The specialist, Tricia Newbold, had filed a discrimination complaint against Kline three months ago.
Newbold’s two-week suspension from the White House security office was for failure to supervise, failure to follow instructions and defiance of authority, according to the suspension decision notice obtained by NBC News. Security office chief Crede Bailey first proposed the suspension on Dec. 3, 2018.
In the notice, the chief security officer denies that the suspension has anything to do with Newbold’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint.
Newbold’s lawyer considers her a whistleblower and said he believes the administrative charges were brought as payback for her decision to file the complaint against Kline.
“It’s clearly reprisal for her whistle blowing,” said her lawyer Ed Passman. “[It] has no basis in merit whatsoever.”
