President Donald Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, declined multiple times over more than a year to seek a routine security clearance normally obtained by West Wing staffers to work at the White House, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Both people said Harp’s reasoning for declining to complete the process was unknown. After concerns mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president himself intervened, and Harp in recent months filled out the forms to launch a formal federal background investigation and received the clearance, one of the people said.
The lack of a security clearance is one of several red flags raised about Harp internally by Trump’s top aides since he returned to the White House in January 2025. Harp operates unusually close to the president and filters much of the information Trump sees on a daily basis, and that proximity has spurred frustration inside the West Wing, according to those two people and two other people granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal and sensitive dynamics.
One national security official voiced concern that Harp’s proximity to the president — in the West Wing and his residence — gives her access to the most sensitive information around Trump, more than nearly all other senior White House officials.
Since joining the president’s orbit ahead of his 2024 presidential campaign, Harp has emerged as a key gatekeeper to the commander in chief. She is known to deliver to the president troves of printouts, including favorable coverage, positive poll numbers from questionable sources and messages from Trump confidants — and those who want to be — trying to get his attention.
Harp “plays into the less productive and more troublesome parts of his nature, putting things in front of him that aren’t vetted,” one of the people said.
There have been “subtle moves” to limit Harp’s round-the-clock access to Trump from top staff that have been unsuccessful, according to another of the four people. “She is just persistent and not realizing that’s what they were trying to do,” this person said.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment from Harp, who holds the titles special assistant to the president and executive assistant to the president.
“Natalie Harp has a security clearance like everyone else, and she is a loyal and hardworking member of President Trump’s team,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said when asked for comment by MS NOW.
One senior White House official familiar with the security clearance process said Harp received multiple extensions to fill out the necessary paperwork. The senior official noted the process to complete the forms is lengthy and requires ample time.
The form, known as the SF-86, is a lengthy document that collects background information including past residences, financial history and foreign contacts, and initiates a federal background investigation.
Three of the other people who spoke with MS NOW said security concerns about Harp have been raised internally by the Secret Service during Trump’s first year back in office for his second term. Some of those centered on her unbridled access to Trump, while others dealt with her failure to obtain a security clearance.
One of those people said other West Wing employees typically filled out their security paperwork at the beginning of their tenures, and said Harp’s was known among some staff as incomplete and not active.
Often seen a few feet from Trump and in earshot of sensitive conversations, Harp is one of his most visible aides accompanying him wherever he goes inside the White House, at his properties in Florida and New Jersey and on other presidential travel.
She was thrust into the spotlight with the recent revelation that she was among the handful of aides accompanying the president inside a catering cart at an airport as he surreptitiously departed Air Force One amid security concerns in Turkey.
Harp’s ascent into Trump’s inner circle was swift. In 2020, she delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention in which she credited Trump for saving her life, saying his signing of the Right to Try Act allowed her to receive experimental treatment for bone cancer. Medical experts have questioned her claim that Trump’s signing was related to the treatment she received.
After her launch into the political spotlight, Harp began working as a host on a far-right television network One America News. In 2022, Harp began working on Trump’s re-election campaign, where top aides nicknamed her the “Human Printer” due to her routine printing of favorable coverage and polling of Trump and delivering it to him by hand multiple times throughout the day. Harp became an official White House staffer when Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025.
Carol Leonnig contributed to this report.
The post Trump aide Natalie Harp worked at the White House without security clearance for a year appeared first on MS NOW.
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