The Trump administration said on Monday it was considering canceling the security clearances for six former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, including the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, who served under Barack Obama, and the onetime head of the FBI sacked by President Trump, James Comey.
Republican Senator Rand Paul earlier tweeted his intention to ask President Trump to cancel former CIA chief John Brennan’s security clearance.
"Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance?" Paul asked, going on to question if Brennan is making mammoth sums “divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on [Trump].”
According to a CNN report, former high-profile intelligence officials, like Brennan, who led CIA under President Barack Obama from March 2013 to January 2017, continue to enjoy high-level security clearance after they quit.
Brennan has been a stiff critic of Trump ever since he left office, the most recent barrage arriving in wake of Trump’s landmark meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this month: he labeled Trump’s rhetoric as “nothing short of treasonous.” Paul, conversely, obstructed a recent resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders that demanded US intelligence’s evaluation of the alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential race, calling it “crazy hatred” targeting Trump. According to Paul, the Senate has been partly seized by “Trump derangement syndrome.”
In March, Paul blasted Brennan for suggesting that Trump will go down in history as a “disgraced demagogue,” noting what was actually disgraceful was Brennan spying on Americans while running the agency.
Brennan has been denounced lately by other lawmakers. Most particularly, Republican Ron DeSantis referred to his term as CIA chief as “a disaster,” while separately picking up on the widely known fact that Brennan voted for a Communist presidential candidate, Gus Hall, in 1976.
READ MORE: Former CIA Director Brennan: Media Leaks, Not Trump, Threatens US Security
Brennan himself later noted that he had opted for the Communists then to “signal his unhappiness with the system, and the need for change.”