The White House has quietly directed the FBI to halt the background check process for dozens of President Donald Trump’s top staffers, and has transferred the process to the Pentagon, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The directive came last month after agents tasked with completing the background investigations had conducted interviews with a handful of top White House aides — a standard part of the background check process.
White House officials took the unusual step of ordering a stop to the background check investigations after they deemed the process too intrusive, sources said.
The procedure typically involves extensive interviews as well as a review of financial records, foreign contacts, past employment, and any potential security risks.
The White House instead decided to transfer the background check process for White House personnel to the Department of Defense for them to complete the checks, the sources said.
A former FBI official told ABC News the approach was “highly unusual.”
“If any of this is true, and if you apply it to whatever has been historically in the remit of the FBI, then it would be breaking that historic, long-standing precedent, and highly unusual,” a former FBI official told ABC News. “It would be highly unusual if that was taken away from the FBI now, for whatever reason, and given over to the DOD or another agency.”
The Department of Defense logo is seen on the wall in the Press Briefing room at the Pentagon, Oct. 29, 2024, in Washington.
Kevin Wolf/AP
Newly installed FBI Director Kash Patel told ABC News in a statement, “The FBI is relentlessly focused on our mission to rebuild trust, restore law and order and let good agents be good agents — and we have full confidence DOD can address any needs in the clearance process.”
Pentagon representatives referred questions on the matter to the White House.
The background check process was halted just days before Patel was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 20, the sources said. The FBI is still conducting background investigations for positions requiring Senate confirmation, said the sources.
The Pentagon’s Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) carries out the bulk of background investigations for the federal government. The FBI carries out investigations for presidential appointees that require Senate confirmation as well as some other presidential appointees, including White House staff.
Historically, administrations have relied on the FBI background check process to ensure that the personnel they are hiring meet stringent ethical standards and don’t risk compromising national security.
“Background investigations for national security positions are conducted to gather information to determine whether you are reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and loyal to the U.S.,” states the SF-86 form filled out by federal employees seeking security clearances and used for background investigations.
However Trump and many of his allies entered the White House with a bitter distrust of the bureau over what they argued was its “weaponization” through the prosecutions brought against him by former special counsel Jack Smith. His top political appointees in the opening month of the administration quickly moved to purge senior ranks of the FBI and DOJ from anyone tied to the Smith prosecutions and those they believed wouldn’t be politically loyal to Trump.
Among Trump’s first presidential actions was issuing a memorandum granting the highest level of security clearance to top White House officials who had not been fully vetted through the background check process.
That list of officials, while not publicly disclosed, included dozens of high-level White House staffers, according to sources familiar with the matter.
In that memorandum, Trump claimed there was a “backlog” in the security clearance process — an issue he blamed on President Joe Biden’s administration.
However, Trump’s transition team had refused for months to enter into an agreement with the Department of Justice under Biden to begin the background check process for individuals who would staff Trump’s incoming administration, which has contributed in part to the staffing issues they now face.
