President Trump has revoked security protections for his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and his former top aide, Brian Hook, despite warnings from the Biden administration that the two men face ongoing threats from Iran because of actions they took on behalf of Mr. Trump. People familiar with the matter said Thursday.
Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Hook were part of an aggressive stance against Iran during Trump’s first presidency, most notably the drone strike that… The powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was killed In early 2020.
Mr. Trump also remains under threat from the action, and his advisers have regularly stressed the severity of the situation in the intervening years in office.
Security details for Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Hook, which were believed to have been provided by the State Department, were withdrawn on Tuesday, one of the people familiar with the matter said. A day earlier, Trump withdrew John R. Kennedy’s US Secret Service details. Bolton, who was Trump’s third national security adviser and is also facing threats.
Unlike former presidents and their spouses, senior US officials do not automatically receive continued protection. But threat assessments from the intelligence community that the level of risk remained for Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Hook and Mr. Bolton was the basis on which the Biden administration gave them. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. asked his aides to warn the Iranians that assassinating a former U.S. government official would be considered an act of war, a former senior administration official said.
Mr. Biden’s administration had privately briefed the new Trump administration on ongoing threats from Iran to former Trump officials, including Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Hook and Mr. Bolton, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Mr. Bolton said he had also been personally notified of the threats by the Biden administration.
“Last weekend, two separate government representatives and two separate government agencies called,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “They said our current assessment is that the threat level remains the same” as it was in 2022, when a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was charged in a murder plot against Mr. Bolton, he added.
A Trump spokesman and a State Department official did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Pompeo declined to comment. Mr. Hook declined to comment.
Mr. Bolton broke with the first Trump administration on bad terms, wrote a tell-all book about his tenure, and was highly critical of Mr. Trump. But it is unclear why the president would order the removal of the security details of Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Hook, who were supporting him.
Mr. Trump told people that he did not want anyone who worked under Mr. Pompeo in his first term working for him. He fired Mr. Hook as a presidential appointee at the Wilson Center for Scholars via a social media post days ago.
