Trump revokes former CIA director and frequent Trump critic John Brennan's security clearance

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the announcement during the White House press briefing on August 15, 2018.

• President Donald Trump released a statement Wednesday announcing that he had revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan.
• Brennan is a frequent critic of Trump.
• In the statement, Trump cited Brennan's "erratic conduct and behavior" and "frenzied commentary" attacking the White House as reasons to revoke his clearance.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Wednesday that President Donald Trump had revoked the security clearance of John Brennan, the former CIA director and a frequent Trump critic.

In a statement that Sanders read at the start of the White House press briefing, Trump cited Brennan's "erratic conduct and behavior" as the primary reason for revoking his clearance.

The president also said Brennan's past actions call into question "his objectivity and credibility."

Among other things, Trump pointed to Brennan's statement to Congress in 2014 when he denied that CIA officials had improperly accessed the computer files of congressional staffers.

"The CIA's inspector general, however, contradicted Mr. Brennan directly, concluding unequivocally that agency officials had indeed" accessed those files, the statement said.

Trump also pointed to Brennan's more recent statement to Congress that the US intelligence community did not make use of the so-called Steele dossier in its January 2017 assessment of Russia's interference in the 2016 US election. That statement has been backed up by several senior former intelligence officials, as well as the former top lawyer for the Director of National Intelligence.

Trump also claimed in his statement that Brennan has "leveraged" his status and access to sensitive information to "make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations, wild outbursts on the internet and television, about this administration."

"Mr. Brennan's lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation's most closely held secrets and facilities, the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos," the statement said.

The president also said that he is considering revoking the clearance of several other former intelligence and law enforcement officials - many of whom have been critical of him - in the coming weeks.

Those people include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI director James Comey, former NSA director Michael Hayden, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, former national security adviser Susan Rice, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

'If he chooses to do it for political reasons, I think that's a terrible precedent'

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Former CIA director John Brennan.

Former intelligence officials often maintain security clearance in case they need to be consulted on various matters pertaining to national security.

"If he chooses to do it for political reasons, I think that's a terrible precedent, and it's a very sad commentary, and it's an abuse of the system," Clapper said last month when it first emerged that Trump was weighing revoking the clearances of former officials.

Hayden seemed to be less unsettled by the revelation, tweeting that he doesn't go back for classified briefings and such a move won't "have any effect on what I say or write."

Meanwhile, Comey reportedly told Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare he doesn't even have a security clearance to revoke and that he was "read out" when he left the government, which he said is normal practice. McCabe also reportedly no longer has security clearance.

Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for McCabe, tweeted last month, "Andrew McCabe's security clearance was deactivated when he was terminated, according to what we were told was FBI policy. You would think the White House would check with the FBI before trying to throw shiny objects to the press corps..."

Other former members of the intelligence community, though not specifically named by the Trump administration on Monday, were also evidently infuriated by this announcement.
A former deputy director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, tweeted that the White House's threat was "nonsense" and "something Putin would do."

"Clearances are taken away for security violations, usually after an investigation. These people do not talk classified publicly. It would be political punishment infringing on first amendment rights," McLaughlin said.