President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, had his White House security clearance restored Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter said, after months of uncertainty stemming in part from his role in the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Kushner was stripped of his interim clearance in February amid an overhaul of procedures governing access to the nation's most sensitive secrets following the resignation of Rob Porter, the President's staff secretary, who had been allowed to remain in his post for months despite allegations of spouse abuse.
The Mueller probe has also hung over Kushner's status in the White House, in part because some of the matters under investigation relate to his role during the campaign and the transition, including contacts with Russians, as well as events that occurred in the early months of the Trump presidency, such as the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
In April, Kushner met with Mueller's investigators for a second time and answered questions for seven hours, according to his attorney, Abbe Lowell. He had previously sat for an interview last November that was largely focused on former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who soon after pleaded guilty to charges of making false statements to the FBI.
White House officials have blamed the delay in Kushner receiving his security clearance on administrative backlogs normal to a new administration, as well as the complicated nature of his application. But Kushner's troubles were compounded at least in part because his initial security clearance application didn't list dozens of foreign contacts that he later included in updated submissions to the FBI.
Kushner's initial SF-86 form did not mention any foreign contacts, though he quickly supplemented it to indicate that he would provide that information. He updated the form in the spring, listing about 100 contacts, but did not mention the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting he attended with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr., and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Kushner updated the SF-86 forms once more in June to include that meeting.
