President Donald Trump’s decision this week Canceling security permits Legal experts say more than four former intelligence officials are an unprecedented step, confirming his willingness to break his bases that belong to contracts to satisfy his supporters and punish his imaginations.
“This is the most political security measures since the Obenheimer case in the fifties,” said Dan Mayer, a Washington -based lawyer who specializes in security clearance cases.
Mayer was referring to Robert Obenheimer, the physicist who supervised the secret program to build the atomic bomb during World War II, whose security statement was removed at the height of the McCarthy era regarding his former associations of the Communist Party.
Previous departments have been accused of canceling security permits based on bias or political bias. Until 1995, for example, homosexuals often had security permits Removed The officials also claimed that they may undergo blackmail. Mayer, a partner in the Tully Rinckey Office, said during the Vietnam War, their materials were canceled during the Vietnam War, whose permits were canceled.
However, any president did not directly go into the process of clearance publicly and widely as Trump did when security permits canceled 50 people in one step, Mayer and other legal experts said. Also, a senior commander was not chosen to publicly cancel security permits for the former CIA directors, deputy directors and other former intelligence officials, many of whom worked in departments from both parties.
In an executive order issued hours after his inauguration on Monday, Trump stripped 49 senior officials in them Security permits to sign a speech showed more than four years ago that Trump said “misleading and inappropriate political coordination” with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign for 2020.
Senior officials have repeatedly denied Trump’s claim. The open message for the year 2020, which was approved by former intelligence and national security officials, indicated that Russia may have played a role in spreading allegations about Biden Hunter as part of a wider effort to influence the election results.
Trump also removed John Bolton’s security clearance, his former national security adviser, accusing him of revealing sensitive information in notes. Bolton denied revealing any information that national security endangered.
Former intelligence officials say Trump’s collective abandonment is an attempt to punish, intimidate and silence those who unite his claims.
A former intelligence official said that Trump “is trying to monitor the general statements of former government officials.” “None of us worked in the government at the time. We were private citizens.”
A White House spokesman rejected criticism and said the executive will restore the credibility of government institutions.
“By misuse of their previous positions in the government, these individuals helped sell public relations fraud to the American people,” Brian Hughes, a White House spokesman for the White House. They strongly hurt the credibility of the intelligence community using their privileges to interfere in presidential elections. President Trump’s work is to restore the credibility of our nation’s institutions. ”
Trump also sparked the possibility of additional punitive procedures related to the 2020. .
Kevin Carroll, a lawyer who represents one of the signing of the letter, said that former officials were simply using their right as private citizens to express their opinion. He said that their general data must have any impact on their security permits.
Carroll said: “Retired intelligence officials maintain the same degree of the right to provide unknown opinions, correct or incorrect, in public matters such as retired diplomats, military officers, or prosecutors – or politicians in this matter,” Carroll said. “It is a mistake to cancel their permits just to do so.”
Carroll added that the federal guidelines for granting access to the classified information do not provide any reasons for canceling the security permit due to the opinions that are publicly expressed.
Former targeted officials of Trump’s executive order also indicated that other retired officials or military officers often express political opinions in support of stability during the recent campaigns, but were not punished.
In the 2020 campaign, more than 200 retired military officers Support Trump is in an open message, saying they are afraid that the alleged “Socialists and Marxists” of the Democratic Party pose a threat to the country’s way of life. None of their security permits was canceled.
Mark Zaid, a lawyer who represents many signers on the letter, said he believed that many former officials are no longer suffering from active security permits. Zaid said that the procedure had no concrete impact and is largely a political step.
Zaid said: “It was clear that this was supposed to strengthen his ideological base and show that he was doing what they wanted.”
It is still unclear whether the previous 50 affected officials will take legal measures to challenge Trump’s executive order. In cases where security clearance decisions or procedures are resumed, the provisions tend to prefer the executive branch, which maintains the extensive power to determine who must obtain secret materials.
The former CIA managers and deputies of managers traditionally give security permits while they are retiring to allow their successors to consult with them on the issues that have emerged.
But Trump has long been confident in the country’s intelligence and national security agencies, dating back to the 2016 election campaign. At that time, the FBI launched a counter -link in the possible links between Trump’s campaign partners and the Russian government. And American spying agencies assessed that the Kremlin sought to direct the elections to Trump through the information war.
Trump accused intelligence agencies of planning to undermine his first term, part of what he and his supporters call a “deep state” plot. Throughout the 2024 election campaign, Trump pledged to reform the intelligence community and the Ministry of Justice.
A disputed message
The president’s order refers to the open message signed by 51 national intelligence and national security officials in October 2020, the president’s order refers to the open message signed by 51 of the former intelligence and national security officials in October 2020, the president’s order indicates the open message signed by 51 senior officials Intelligence and National Security in October 2020 “carries” the accountability of former government officials about the intervention of elections and the improper disclosure of sensitive government information. “
The message, which was sent to news means, is directed New York Post report This was cited with the electronic messages that the paper said came from a laptop that belongs to Hunter Biden. The Post said she got the hard computer driver from Trump’s lawyer and Rudi Juliani’s ally and reported emails related to Hunter Biden’s consulting activities in Ukraine.
A message from former officials stated that the appearance of emails “contains all the classic allocations for the Russian information process.”
“We want to emphasize that we do not know whether the emails, which were presented by President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudi Juliani, authentic or not,” and we have no evidence of Russian involvement – only that our experience makes us very skeptical that the Russian government played an important role in This issue. “
The message said: “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how the Americans vote in these elections, and we strongly believe that the Americans need to be aware of that.”
Carroll said that the suspicions of the former officials were reasonable given the “Russian intervention documented in the 2016 US presidential election.”
For Trump and his allies, the letter was seen as an attempt by former officials who used their association with US intelligence agencies to suppress harmful information about the Biden family weeks before the 2020 elections.Spies lie“
“The signatories of the intelligence community intentionally to address the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.” Trump said.
The materials on the laptop hard disk were later verified, and it has become evidence of a criminal investigation into the Ministry of Justice from Hunter Biden. Prosecutors did not accuse Hunter Biden of corrupt transactions in Ukraine, but he was convicted of federal weapons and pledged tax evasion last year.
Justice officials in intelligence agencies themselves as non -party professionals devoted to helping decisions to the president regarding the threats facing the country. But Trump’s executive matter explains how the excessive political scene in factions can cause confidence in professional intelligence officials who served departments from both parties.
Mayer said that Trump “excluded the basic leadership from the old republican and democratic circles.” “This is related to information and control of who is in the conversation.”
Another president said that their authority did not exercise security permits in a general partisan way. Trump’s work shows how he ignores the unwritten rules and rules that governed the behavior of his predecessors.
“Our democratic system depends, at the end of the day, on good intentions and people who are trying to do the right thing, and there is that the ethical associated with not doing the right thing.” “This has fallen away.”
Bolton notes
In the executive order, Trump said that his decision to cancel the statement to John Bolton, who served as the National Security Adviser during his first term, was a response to Bolton’s memoirs, “the room in which it happened.”
In the book, Bolton described Trump as “amazingly unfamiliar” in foreign policy books: “I am very compressed to determine any important Trump’s decision during my state, which was not driven by re -election accounts.”
But Trump’s executive order said: “The treatment of reckless notes of sensitive information has undermined the ability of the presidents in the future to request and obtain explicit advice on national security issues from their employees.”
Bolton and former Ministry of Justice officials said that the book did not reveal any secret information and that it dealt with the matter appropriately and legal. Judge unacceptable Initials that Bolton came forward with publication without completing the government’s review to remove potential classified information.
Trump this week also canceled the protection of the Polton’s Secret Service. The security details were presented to Bolton due to an alleged assassination plot that was part of Tehran’s attempt to avenge Trump by agreeing to strike a drone in the United States that killed Iranian senior Qassem Soleimani.
In 2022, the Ministry of Justice accused a member of the Iranian Islamic Guard in an alleged plan to pay $ 300,000 to kill Bolton.
When asked about the decision on Tuesday, Trump told reporters: “We will not get security for people for the rest of their lives.”
