About three weeks ago, first daughter and hotel heiress Ivanka Trump finally put to rest lingering rumors about how she and her husband, White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, obtained their elusive security clearances. "Absolutely not," said Ivanka, when asked if the pair had received any "special treatment" from her father, specifically in the form of "overriding other officials," while their applications were pending. She did not equivocate: "The president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance."

It turns out that this proclamation—much like the entire reasonable-adults-in-the-room mythos Jared and Ivanka have strained to cultivate—might be a gigantic crock of shit. According to the New York Times, the president personally ordered former chief of staff John Kelly to approve his son-in-law's credential, "overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House's top lawyer." Trump has, not shockingly, issued similar denials when asked about his penchant for nepotism. "I was never involved," he told the Times in January. "I know that there was issues back and forth about security for numerous people, actually. But I don't want to get involved in that stuff."

The alleged directive so unnerved Kelly and McGahn that they both authored internal memos detailing the national security concerns that were swept aside. There is no evidence that Kelly refused the order, however, and neither official has publicly discussed this troubling incident since their departures from the administration, as either course of action would require the sort of moral courage they evidently do not possess.

Trump, moreover, may not have acted entirely on his own initiative here. According to the Times report, after Jared's application stalled, both he and Ivanka complained vociferously until Trump took action to deliver the sought-after prize. It is a time-honored tradition among wealthy failsons like Kushner, a middling student whose admission to Harvard was famously precipitated by his family's multimillion-dollar donation to the university, when something to which they believe they are entitled appears out of reach: Ask father to fix the problem. If this aspect of the story is accurate, Ivanka's somber proclamation of innocence would be not only untrue, but also a part of a cynical cover-up of an earlier cynical cover-up.

The precise reason Jared Kushner had such trouble obtaining a security clearance in the first place—if a such a reason exists—has never been publicly revealed. But there are many readily-available details which could, on a standalone basis, support the conclusion among national security experts that the heir to an imploding real-estate empire may not be well-suited to the task of keeping top-secret information top secret. There were, for example, his troubling omissions of Russian contacts from his initial application, and his reported interest in developing a back-channel line of communication with the Kremlin. That's in addition to his frequent (and frank) WhatsApp chats with a journalist-murdering dictator. It also came to light that he attempted to hide his interactions with WikiLeaks. And there is the fact, as the Washington Post reported last year, that multiple foreign governments have been brainstorming ways to use the Kushners' well-documented financial troubles to manipulate him into serving their interests. The guy's an easy target.

By virtue of his familial relationship, Jared Kushner understands that no matter how ill-advised or self-interested his conduct in office may be, he will never face a meaningful consequence on his job performance. The president's ongoing oligarchic revival is objectionable because it runs afoul of basic notions of fairness, bestowing undeserved power on unintelligent people fortunate enough to be born rich. But this (latest) Trump family debacle is a timely reminder that lowering standards is dangerous to the people who count on government to keep them safe. This dynamic is a major reason why true oligarchies fail: because the talent pool is perilously thin, and when the people in charge begin to flounder, no one around is any better than the last.

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