White House faces questions over security clearance for top Trump aide Natalie Harp

Former ethics tsar calls report that executive assistant to president worked for a year without clearance ‘shocking’ The White House faced fresh questions on Thursday over whether Donald Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, had access to US government secrets without security clearance. Harp, who is executive assistant to the US president, worked at the White House for a year without the routine clearance, the MS Now network reported on Thursday. She refused to file the relevant forms for unknown reasons, according to two unnamed sources cited by MS Now. It was only when the White House counsel’s office raised the issue, and when Trump himself became involved, that Harp filled out the paperwork for a federal background investigation and was belatedly granted clearance, according to the report. Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics tsar, said: “It is shocking that an aide who has potential exposure to the nation’s most sensitive secrets reportedly went without a security clearance for so long. Treating access to confidences as a casual job perk is an outrageous way to handle our national security.” Eisen, co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action, a non-partisan group dedicated to f