Rand Paul Says He Wants Trump to Revoke Brennan’s Security Clearance
Rand Paul Seeks Bar on Trump-Critic Brennan's Classified Access
(Bloomberg) -- Senator Rand Paul said he’s meeting with President Donald Trump Monday and plans to ask him to block access to sensitive information by a former top U.S. intelligence official who’s been fiercely critical of the White House.
The former official, John Brennan, was CIA director under President Barack Obama and helped produce the intelligence reports that first found Russia meddled in the election. Following Trump’s meeting last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Brennan called Trump’s performance “treasonous” and said he “is wholly in the pocket of Putin and that his performance exceeded the threshold for impeachment for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’"
Brennan was one of several intelligence officials who showed Trump classified information indicating Putin had personally authorized hacking to try and sway the 2016 U.S. election in Trump’s favor, according to the New York Times.
"Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance!" Paul said in a posting on Twitter Monday.
The idea of moving to revoke Brennan’s security clearance has been gaining traction in conservative media circles. Fox News host Tucker Carlson on July 19 called Brennan an out-of-the-closet extremist" with "a documented history of dishonesty" and said he shouldn’t have a clearance.
Paul, the maverick Kentucky Republican, poses a potential problem for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh because he’s signaled doubts about his commitment to protecting privacy rights. But his request regarding Brennan could fall upon sympathetic ears after he offered a rare endorsement of Trump’s performance during a post-summit press conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin last week.
Trump tweeted a public thanks to Paul July 17, saying to him "you really get it!" after Paul defended Trump’s disparaging comments about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s election-meddling probe, telling CBS, "The President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations -- what’s he supposed to think?”
To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Derek Wallbank at dwallbank@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Kathleen Hunter
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