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Several White House staffers with pending security clearance issues have been reportedly fired or reassigned

The White House is reshuffling amid the fallout from the Rob Porter scandal.

  • The White House has fired or reassigned several staffers who had pending issues with their security clearances.
  • Several top aides, including senior adviser Jared Kushner and former staff secretary Rob Porter, operated with interim top-secret clearance until recently, when Porter was forced to resign amid allegations of domestic abuse.
  • Since then, chief of staff John Kelly has restructured the guidelines governing who has access to the nation's most sensitive intelligence.
  • Kushner was one of several aides to lose interim clearance last month.
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The White House has fired or reassigned a number of West Wing staffers who had pending problems with their security clearance forms, ABC News reported Wednesday.

Members of President Donald Trump's administration, particularly senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, have long faced questions over their security clearances which granted some staffers access to top-secret classified intelligence.

But the issue attracted renewed scrutiny last month, when it emerged that former White House staff secretary Rob Porter held an interim top-secret security clearance while he was under investigation over domestic abuse allegations.

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White House chief of staff John Kellyinstituted new guidelinesthat he said would help close some loopholes.

"In ordinary circumstances, the existing processes we inherited, along with the reforms I have implemented in the past months, have generally worked well," Kelly said in a memo on February 16. "But recent events have exposed some remaining shortcomings."

Last month, all White House aides who held interim top-secret clearances were downgraded to "secret,"

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