Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have launched an investigation into the White House security clearance process that is likely to bring a focus to how Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was able to get access to highly classified US documents in spite of concerns that he was targeted for manipulation by foreign governments.

“The Committee on Oversight and Reform is launching an in-depth investigation of the security clearance process at the White House and Transition Team in response to grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump Administration,” Reprsentative Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the committee, said in a letter to the White House on Wednesday.

Last year it was discovered that as many as 130 political appointees were working for the president without permanent security clarances as late as November 2017, including Mr Kushner.

Mr Kushner has been given a wide berth of responsibility in the White House including major issues like negotiating peace in the Middle East and reforms to the US criminal justice system.

Other political appointees with temporary clearances included Mr Trump's adult daughter Ivanka Trump, as well as his top legal counsel.

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Mr Cumming said in his letter that his committee will seek to find out "why the White House and Transition Team appear to have disregarded established procedures for safeguarding classified information" and als the "extent to which the nation's most highly guarded secrets were provided to officials who should not have had access to them".

The White House has previously acknowledged there were issues with the security clearance process, with former Chief of Staff John Kelly announcing a review last year. Since then the White House has not made public any changes to the system.

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Other individuals who Mr Cummings said would be of interest are former White House National Security Advisor Michael Flyn, current National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Mr Flynn's son, Michael Flynn Jr.

Here is the full text from Mr Cummings' letter to the White House:

The Committee on Oversight and Reform is launching an in-depth investigation of the security clearance process at the White House and Transition Team in response to grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump Administration, including by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and others.

The goals of this investigation are to determine why the White House and Transition Team appear to have disregarded established procedures for safeguarding classified information, evaluate the extent to which the nation’s most highly guarded secrets were provided to officials who should not have had access to them, and develop reforms to remedy the flaws in current White House systems and practices. The investigation also will seek to determine why the White House is currently defying federal law by failing to provide to Congress information about its security clearance process required by the SECRET Act.

Last year, General John Kelly, President Trump’s Chief of Staff at the time, conceded that there are major ‘shortcomings’ with the White House’s security clearance process. He warned that the White House ‘should—and in the future, must—do better,’ and he stated that ‘now is the time to take a hard look at the way the White House processes clearance requests.’