Getting Top Secret security clearance is a pain in the ass. You have to basically list everyone you’ve ever met. You need multiple references from every place you’ve ever lived, and many of those people will be personally interviewed to make sure you’re not a spy. You aren’t allowed to be on certain medications. If you’ve visited certain countries, it’s a problem.
It seems obvious to me that Trump would not even come close to passing this test if he were trying to get a normal job requiring TS clearance. By getting elected president, is this whole process just tossed out the window, or what? What about his advisors? Are they checked out at all?
Why don’t we require people running for high office to get a TS clearance before they can even apply? We do it with military personnel.
We don’t elect military personnel to their positions. We DO elect a president, in a constitutionally-mandated political process, which both predates and precludes any consideration of clearance-worthiness (other than the political competition itself – as a campaign tactic, for instance. E.g., “My opponent is so crooked he can’t possibly be trusted with the great secrets a President has access to.”)
If someone is elected, then they have clearance. If they do bad enough stuff with their clearance, they only recourse is impeachment and conviction in the Senate. You can’t even indict, try, and convict a sitting president for overt and intentional treason. The only response is in the Congress.
In “civics terms”, it’s “a political matter.”
Among many other reasons, this is why elections matter.
On the final question: for the same reason they are not required to have a clean arrest record either (you can run from prison) --because it would make it trivial to block out candidates from even running, and the Constitution does not mandate any other qualification than age, citizenship and residence.
Here’s a previous thread (pre Trump) that deals with pretty much the same question. Short answer is that yes, the President has access to all classified info, since the power to classify is derived from Executive orders issued by the President:
I’d say it’s a safe assumption that would extend to his advisors as well - if he says “Advisor X should have access to all top secret information”, no one has the power to say no to that.
As regards your second question - the Constitution spells out the requirements to be President - 35 years old, natural citizen, 14 years resident in the USA. An attempt to add further requirements by the legislature (Congress or state) would likely result in a challenge/constitutional crisis.
Constitutional officers do not require security clearances. Otherwise they are attached to jobs, rather than people, and clearances must be granted by the appropriate sources not by the President’s whims.
I appreciate what the OP went through to get their clearance … but that’s nothing even close to what a candidate has to go through to run for President … if The Donald couldn’t hide his crotch-grabbing ways, he probably couldn’t hide funneling money into ISIS …
There were plenty of spies and traitors in the Revolution. Not just Benedict Arnold, but people like Benjamin Church. The Founding Fathers knew enough about security risks to have made background checks a requirement for office if they had wanted.
If I’m not mistaken, classification and security clearance procedure is almost entirely a creature of Executive Order (see, e.g., EO 13526). Pursuant to those orders, there are procedures in place by which access is evaluated, but the President presumably does have a great deal of discretion to issue new orders altering or creating exceptions to those procedures.
To get a top secret clearance, you have to be interviewed and approved by somebody in authority.
The President has been approved by 50 million people—the ultimate authority.
I think the OP is hinting at “in order to be eligible to run for president one ought to be also clearable in the standard business way”. Would adding that requirement to presidential eligibility require a constitutional amendment? The it’s dead in the water - too many red states.
Largely incorrect. As I state in almost all of these threads, constitutionally, the President IS THE executive branch. Some HR director at the State Department has no power to overrule his boss’ boss’ boss.
If Trump decides he wants MY advice on a matter of national importance, he can share national secrets with me and ask my opinion. The only check on that power would be impeachment and removal from office if Congress thought that was reckless. As the head of the executive branch, Trump does not need pre-approval from an “appropriate” source. He is the sole source of power in the executive branch.
It would be a fundamental reversal in how our government works. Our political system is managed by the President. We should not have our President being managed by the political system.
This is not actually true since a clearance requires a fair amount of financial disclosure aimed at detecting foreign financial interests (any foreign interests, not just enemies of the USA). It was true that candidates did disclose this type of thing in the recent pass, but apparently the voting public DGAF.
Yeah, and despite arguments to the contrary, I feel like it would improve the process. I’d be curious to see what portion of the population would support amending the constitution to require higher standards for our presidential nominees. I suspect it would be pretty high for both parties.