Here’s how the strange saga of Jared Kushner’s security-clearance application, which he has amended several times since January, unfolded, according to a person close to Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser.

Kushner had an aide in his office in New York fill out the form, known as an SF-86, and on January 18th it was forwarded to officials in Trump’s Washington transition office who, believing it was completed, submitted it to the F.B.I., which reviews applications for security clearances.

“It had many errors on it,” the source close to Kushner said. His weight was incorrect. The years he received his graduate degrees were wrong. (He has a law degree and an M.B.A. from N.Y.U.) Some addresses were incorrect.

But the most astonishing omission was that Kushner left off any reference to contacts he had with representatives of foreign governments. The entire exercise of vetting an official for a security clearance is aimed at testing the official’s level of honesty. That’s why at some agencies, such as the C.I.A., a polygraph test is also administered. White House officials don’t generally undergo polygraphs, but they are interviewed by the F.B.I. after they submit their clearance form.

Being fully transparent is crucial to passing muster with the F.B.I. “The most important thing that a security clearance is aiming to determine is whether you are blackmailable by a foreign power,” a former senior Obama White House official told me. “The reason why it’s important for you to include that information is that if you don’t, then you’re blackmailable because someone could say, ‘Well, I know this guy used to do X and Y and Z.’ ” The former official said the process involves long interviews with F.B.I. agents, who ask questions like, “ ‘When you travelled, did you ever have a sexual relationship with a woman in another country?’ The reason they’re asking you that question is not because you’re not allowed to have sex with a foreigner but it’s that, is there a possible honey trap? The tone of the process is determining your truthfulness and then the risk of dishonesty being exploited to leverage you.”

Less than twenty-four hours after Trump’s transition office submitted the initial Kushner security-clearance application riddled with omissions, Kushner sent a statement to the F.B.I. explaining that he met with many foreign officials during the campaign and transition, the source close to Kushner said. But he did not immediately include a list of those contacts. “We couldn’t quickly put that list together, but we could make sure that the F.B.I. did not act under the notion that he had no contacts,” the source said.

Over the next several months, Kushner’s team put together a list of those contacts—there were about a hundred—and submitted it on May 11th, shortly before Kushner’s interview with the F.B.I. But the list was still incomplete.

In June, as Kushner and his lawyers began reviewing old e-mails to respond to congressional investigators probing the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, they discovered the now infamous e-mail chain about the June 9, 2016, meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who promised to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. “He had forgotten about the meeting, and when he saw the e-mail he said, ‘Well, let’s try to figure out who the people were,’ ” the source close to Kushner said. On June 21, 2017, Kushner submitted that information to the F.B.I. and shortly thereafter was interviewed again.

There are two issues raised by Kushner’s multiple amendments to his security-clearance form. The first is whether his initial lack of transparency amounts to reasonable grounds for him to be denied a clearance. The second is whether his omissions violate a criminal statute against making false statements on such forms.

With regard to whether he should have the clearance, Kushner’s argument is that he didn’t demonstrate that he was vulnerable to blackmail. “Have they lied repeatedly? Are they financially irresponsible or have had personal habits like drug use that could put classified information or national security in jeopardy?,” the source said.

They predicted that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, will likely review the issue of false statements and find that Kushner did not commit a crime “If you’re asking me does he have a liability under the False Statements Act, the only thing that was incorrect was a form that was filed and corrected within twenty-four hours. That would not normally be a basis for a false-statement indictment.”

Others disagree, especially on this issue of the clearance itself. “Under those circumstances, it’s hard to imagine anyone getting a security clearance unless they were related to the President,” Matt Olsen, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center under Obama, said. He said that he saw many people who were denied clearances for less serious errors. “It sends a terrible message.”

Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, agreed.

“If Mr. Kushner failed to disclose this meeting or other meetings with the Russians, I think that any other person in their circumstances would have their clearance revoked immediately or suspended pending investigation and then ultimately revoked,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine anyone in like circumstances continuing to maintain a clearance. And the question here is, will the President’s son-in-law get special treatment?”

Two Washington lawyers who have worked on cases involving false-statement charges said they believed it would be difficult to prosecute Kushner. “There’s nothing right now that he’s going to jail for,” Mark Zaid, a lawyer who helps government officials with the security-clearance process, said. “Even when they screwed it up the first time back in January, they realized it within twenty-four hours. And security clearances are all about mitigation. And the mitigating factors for these types of cases is did you realize it? And did you resolve it quickly before the government reached out to you?”

Stan Brand, another lawyer who works on such cases, also said that it would be difficult to prosecute Kushner. “Everybody is bandying about the criminal false-statements statute, and certainly that’s always in play when you fill out federal forms, whether it’s a security clearance or a mortgage, but what I think people are overlooking is the complexity of demonstrating criminal intent,” Brand told me. “I wouldn’t say it’s common, but it’s not uncommon that people will omit or inadvertently not list everything given that this is, like, a hundred-and-twenty-five-page form that asks for a lot of stuff. So you would have to show a high level of intent to mislead or omit.”

In the end, the criminal aspect of the Kushner security-clearance scandal will be up to Mueller. As to whether Kushner receives a clearance at all, the F.B.I. will soon issue some sort of report to the White House on the matter. But the F.B.I. doesn’t actually have the final say. Ultimately, decisions on security clearances are left to the head of the agency where the person works. In Kushner’s case, that means the ultimate decision rests with his father-in-law.