Former CIA Director John Brennan no longer has access to classified information
President Donald Trump has removed the security clearance from former CIA Director John Brennan for “lying and “erratic conduct.”
Many CIA chiefs are able to keep their access to classified information after leaving office “so that they can consult with their successors regarding matters about which they may have special insight and as a professional courtesy,” Trump said.
“Neither of these justifications supports Mr. Brennan’s continued access to classified information.”
Trump went on to note Brennan’s “erratic conduct and behavior” which had “tested and far exceeded the limits of any professional courtesy that may have been due to him.”
The news comes just one month after Brennan warned Trump that the CIA and intel community will start withholding vital information from him.
EpochTimes reports: Trump questioned Brennan’s credibility, citing a 2014 incident in which the CIA head denied to Congress that CIA officials under his supervision had improperly accessed the computer files of congressional staffers.
The CIA’s inspector general found otherwise, forcing Brennan to apologize.
Trump also cited Brennan’s claim to Congress in 2017 about the Steele dossier, a collection of unverified opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign.
Brennan said the dossier wasn’t used to form the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Brennan’s assertion was “contradicted by at least two other senior officials in the intelligence community and all of the facts,” Trump said.
Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the NSA at the time when the ICA was drafted, wrote to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that the dossier was used to inform the assessment, according to Real Clear Investigations.
Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who led the creation of the ICA, admitted to CNN in 2017 that “some of the substantive content of the dossier” was included in the assessment.
Brennan spread the claims from the dossier to the Gang of Eight, the Congress members privy to classified information.
One of them, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), used the claims in a letter to prompt then-FBI Director James Comey to investigate the Trump campaign for alleged collusion with the Russian interference.
The letter was then used by the FBI to prop up its FISA warrant to spy on then-Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.
Core claims in the warrant were based on the dossier—a fact the FBI failed to disclose to the FISA court approving the warrant. Congress continues to investigate the matter.
Page was never charged with any crime, but said his career and personal life were ruined because certain media spread unsubstantiated claims from the dossier that he met two prominent Russians while on a trip to Moscow.
‘Wild Outbursts’
Trump said, “Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations—wild outbursts on the internet and television—about this Administration.”
With Trump coming to office, Brennan left the CIA and became a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
Brennan’s commentary largely consists of attacks on Trump and his administration. It includes a plethora of accusations, from “hate speech” and “human rights violations” to “high crimes” and treason.
“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 facilitates the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos,” Trump said.