Among Donald Trump’s day one executive orders was revoking the security clearances of 51 former “intelligence experts” who signed a letter ginned up by Antony Blinken, claiming The New York Post expose of Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Blinken was rewarded with the Secretary of State posting. The executive order clearly explains the rationale for the revocations:
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Graphic: NY Post 03-19-22 Cover. Public Domain
Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Before being issued, the letter was sent to the CIA Prepublication Classification Review Board, the body typically assigned to formally evaluate the sensitive nature of documents prior to publication. Senior CIA officials were made aware of the contents of the letter, and multiple signatories held clearances at the time and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.
Federal policymakers must be able to rely on analysis conducted by the Intelligence Community and be confident that it is accurate, crafted with professionalism, and free from politically motivated engineering to affect political outcomes in the United States. The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions. This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country. And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled.
The order goes into greater detail and orders an investigation into other potential breaches of national security.
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Graphic: Twitter Screenshot
It’s widely known the signatories of that letter knew the FBI had the laptop for many months and had confirmed it belonged to Hunter Biden, its contents were genuine, had not been tampered with, and had no relationship to Russia. They knew their assertions were false; they were election interference to help Joe Biden. Polling reveals Americans would not have voted for Biden had they known.
The letter has long been controversial, and some of those signing it have done their best to backpedal:
“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails… are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case,” the former officials wrote in 2020. “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
In other words, the noble signatories had no evidence the laptop was Russian disinformation, they were protecting America against a national security threat for which there was no evidence just in time to throw the election to Joe Biden. Such nobility and selfless love of country.
As one might expect, now that they’ve lost lucrative security clearances, they’re crying foul:
“It would be contrary to decades of national security norms to suspend the security clearances of individuals who did nothing other than, as private citizens, exercise their protected First Amendment rights,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents a number of the signatories. “Such an action would be unprecedented and undeserved, especially given many of the signatories spent their entire careers serving apolitically to protect the American people.”
So, revoking their clearances violates the First Amendment? That’s rich coming from people whose purpose in signing the letter was deceptively depriving Americans of information essential to informed voting. One even admitted the letter was political.
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Graphic: E-mail from former CIA Director Brennan via NY Post
Zaid is also engaging in deception. There is no right to hold a security clearance, nor are revocations unprecedented or undeserved. Clearances are granted only after exhaustive investigations going back to elementary school, and the slightest worry or doubt is sufficient to deny or revoke one. Service members have seen their clearances revoked for missteps that clearly did not result in any breach of security. Merely the appearance of a mistake or carelessness is more than enough. The government doesn’t have to prove anything to revoke a clearance to which no one is entitled.
Even during the Biden years security clearances were suspended. The most notable example was Iran envoy Rob Malley—a decades-long pal of Blinken–suspected of giving classified materials to Iran. Malley has since gone far below the media’s radar and no charges have been publicly filed.
Because no one has a right to a security clearance, Zaid, crying politics—there’s irony for you–is making a case for his clients in the media. Should he try to appeal to a court, any non-political judge should throw it out. Sadly, that’s no longer a certainty.
Trump’s revocation of the 51’s clearances is not only consistent with past practice, it’s entirely within his discretion. It couldn’t happen to worse people.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
