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(WASHINGTON) — 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.”

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.

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(WASHINGTON) — In a sneaky legislative maneuver tied into the effort to pass a funding bill and avert a government shutdown, House Republicans earlier this week successfully blocked Democrats from forcing votes and debate on President Donald Trump’s controversial tariffs.

It was a somewhat complicated move. But it worked — and demonstrated that Republicans are attempting to give cover to Trump and his implementation of sweeping tariffs on top U.S. trading partners that have roiled the stock market and stoked diplomatic tensions.

Had Democrats forced a vote and debate on the tariffs, it could have forced Republicans to go on the record on Trump’s tariff agenda — perhaps splitting with the president’s actions.

To tee up Speaker Mike Johnson’s temporary government funding bill, which the House passed Tuesday evening, the House first needed to pass what’s known as “a rule.” Buried inside the text of that rule was legislative language that prevents Democrats from forcing a potentially politically painful vote to end Trump’s tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.

How could Democrats compel a vote to end the tariffs?

Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China by declaring illegal migration and fentanyl constituted a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act.

But, here’s the catch: under the NEA, Congress has the authority to move quickly to terminate that emergency declaration. Top House Democrats tried to do that last week.

But inside that rule, which passed along party lines and cleared the way for a vote on the House GOP’s stopgap funding bill, was a provision prohibiting lawmakers from forcing a vote to terminate the president’s border emergency and the resulting tariffs until at least January 2026.

The section reads, “Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.”

Democrats are blasting the move.

“Guess what they tucked into this rule, hoping nobody would notice? They slipped in a little clause letting them escape ever having to debate or vote on Trump’s tariffs. Isn’t that clever?” Rep. Jim McGovern, the ranking member on the House Rules Committee, said during floor debate Tuesday.

Congress could still approve a joint resolution to terminate the president’s national emergency. That would require the support of both rank-and-file GOP lawmakers and House Republican leadership, which is unlikely.

Democratic Rep. Don Beyer blasted the maneuver on “ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis” Tuesday.

Asked about the Republicans’ move and if Democrats have any way around it, Beyer said “not really,” calling it “tragic.”

“Once again, Trump has ignored existing law and the Constitution with all the tariffs he’s been announcing in recent weeks,” Beyer said. “He inherited on Jan. 20 the strongest economy this country has ever had. And we are rapidly heading towards recession right now just because of the extraordinary uncertainty in business decisions and capital investment and hiring decisions.”

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(WASHINGTON) — As early as Friday, President Donald Trump is expected to invoke the Alien Enemies Act — a wartime law that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation — as part of the efforts to carry out mass deportations, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The Department of Defense is not expected to have a role in the invoking of the authority, which could be used to deport some migrants without a hearing

There have been discussions inside the administration about invoking the act, multiple sources said.

Trump had previously said on the campaign trail that he planned to invoke the act.

The act hasn’t been used since World War II, when it was used to detain Japanese Americans.

During World War II, the Alien Enemies Act was partially used to justify the internment of Japanese immigrants who had not become U.S. citizens. The broader internment of Japanese-Americans was carried out under executive orders signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and not the Alien Enemies Act since the law does not apply to U.S. citizens.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s administration has asked the Supreme Court to significantly narrow nationwide injunctions issued by three different federal judges blocking his executive order redefining birthright citizenship in the U.S.

The emergency applications ask the justices to take a “modest” step and roll back the judges’ restrictions on Trump’s Day 1 order, allowing federal agencies to move forward with developing guidance and preparing for implementation if, at the end of litigation, the president prevails.

“At a minimum, the Court should stay the injunctions to the extent they prohibit agencies from developing and issuing public guidance regarding the implementation of the Order. Only this Court’s intervention can prevent universal injunctions from becoming universally acceptable,” Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the application.

Trump’s executive order would deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to unlawful immigrants or those on a temporary immigrant status. The administration’s claimed in court proceedings birthright citizenship creates a strong incentive for illegal immigration.

Federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state, in their rulings, have said such a move would appear plainly contrary to the text of the 14th Amendment and legal precedent.

The 14th Amendment states that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

The Trump administration, in its appeals to the Supreme Court, railed against the use of nationwide injunctions and said they should be limited to the plaintiffs involved in the legal challenges.

“This Court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched,” the acting solicitor general wrote. “The Court should stay the district courts’ preliminary injunctions except as to the individual plaintiffs and the identified members of the organizational plaintiffs (and, if the Court concludes that States are proper litigants, as to individuals who are born or reside in those States).”

“At a minimum, the Court should stay the injunctions to the extent they prohibit agencies from developing and issuing public guidance regarding the implementation of the Order. Only this Court’s intervention can prevent universal injunctions from becoming universally acceptable.”

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