RAND PAUL: Trump Should Keep Revoking Ex-Obama Officials’ Security Clearances.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) is hailing President Donald Trump’s decision to strip former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. But the Kentucky Republican doesn’t think the president should stop with Brennan.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders accused Brennan, who led the CIA for most of former President Barack Obama’s second term, of “lying.” Brennan’s “recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary,” Sanders said, “is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets.”
Sanders’ remarks echoed the sentiments of Paul, who has spent weeks calling for Brennan, a harsh critic of Trump, to lose his clearance. Late last month, Paul wrote on Twitter that “Brennan and other partisans” should be stripped of their security clearances. He suggested Brennan has leveraged his clearance into gigs as a cable news talking head.
So it came as no surprise that Paul lauded Trump for taking away Brennan’s security clearance. “I urged the President to do this. I filibustered Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information,” Paul said in a statement. “He participated in a shredding of constitutional rights, lied to Congress, and has been monetizing and making partisan political use of his clearance since his departure.”
In an interview yesterday with WKU Public Radio, Paul said he wants other ex-Obama administration intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, to lose their clearances as well.
According to the Kentucky Republican, Clapper lied before the Senate Intelligence Committee when he was asked in March 2013 by Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) if U.S. intelligence was spying on American citizens. “When he was asked by Sen. Wyden if the NSA was collecting information on Americans, private information, he said no and that was a lie,” Paul said. “Later, Edward Snowden revealed that they were collecting all Americans’ phone information.”
Paul has previously come down hard on ex-Obama administration officials. Last month, he suggested that Brennan, Clapper, and Comey were “bad apples that need to be dismissed from the swamp of Washington.” And in April, Paul accused Rice of committing a crime by unmasking the identities of associates to Trump.
I stand with Rand on this.