The White House is looking into revoking the security clearances of several top Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday during the daily press briefing.
A reporter asked Sanders about Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) tweets Monday morning, calling on President Trump to remove the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan and others.
Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018
Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018
Just got out of WH meeting with @realDonaldTrump. I restated to him what I have said in public: John Brennan and others partisans should have their security clearances revoked.
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018
Public officials should not use their security clearances to leverage speaking fees or network talking head fees
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018
It was apparently a fruitful meeting because in answer to the reporter’s question, Sanders said the list went beyond Brennan:
Not only is the president looking to take away Brennan’s security clearance, he’s also looking into the clearances of Comey, Clapper, Hayden, Rice, and McCabe. The president is exploring the mechanisms to removing security clearance because they’ve politicized and in some cases monetized their public service and security clearances. Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the president is extremely inappropriate, and the fact that people with security clearances are making these baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.
.@PressSec: "Not only is the president looking to take away Brennan's security clearance, he's also looking into the clearances of Comey, Clapper, Hayden, Rice and McCabe." https://t.co/2ny8BaYJPJ pic.twitter.com/1miwzEPIoR
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 23, 2018
Suspected leakers John Brennan and James Clapper are now contributors to NBC/MSNBC and CNN, respectively.
In a recent interview on CNN, Sen. Paul blasted the intel heads under President Obama, saying they had proven themselves to be untrustworthy — people such as John Brennan, who actually voted for a Communist presidential candidate at the height of the Cold War, and James Clapper, who perjured himself before Congress.
It does matter because they started up this and ginned up this whole thing, have gone after the president saying he’s committed collusion with Russia. No evidence of that and it continues to go on. Who are the people that started this?
James Clapper, who lied to the Senate, said they weren’t collecting our information, and yet they were collecting all of our information and housing it in Utah.John Brennan has now accused — let me finish.
John Brennan has now accused the president of treason. This is John Brennan who voted for the Communist party when he was a young man. John Brennan now thinks he’s holier than anybody else. But these people had the power to collect every American’s information.
And these are the people that I am concerned used their bias against President Trump, and absolutely I’m with the president on this. The intelligence community was full of biased people including Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and dozens of others.
Strzok’s security clearance is another one the White House should be looking into. It was widely reported that he’d had his security clearance revoked in June amid an internal disciplinary review, but during his testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees earlier this month he stated that he still had “Top-Secret SCI” clearance.
A DOJ official told the Daily Caller that “Strzok was given a limited clearance in preparation for the hearing that “will end when this is over.” Whenever that is.
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