As part of his record number of 26 day-one executive orders, President Donald Trump has directed that the Director of National Security “revoke any current or active clearances” held by dozens of former intelligence officials who signed a letter suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The directive is aimed at a number of high-ranking former intelligence officials, including former CIA directors Leon Panetta and John Brennan, as well as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden. The document also revokes the clearance of former National Security Advisor John Bolton for publishing a memoir after leaving the White House in 2019, which the order claims “created a grave risk” by potentially exposing classified material. In another executive order from the Trump’s first week back in office, he removed the Secret Service detail assigned to Bolton, who is the target of an Iranian assassination plot according to U.S. intelligence.
In October 2020, those named in Trump’s order signed a letter expressing concern about the origin of emails that the New York Post said came from a laptop belonging to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The emails reported on by the Post were related to Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine. The letter stated that while they could not reach a definitive conclusion about the authenticity of the emails, the way they were made public had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
At the time, John Ratcliffe, then Director of National Intelligence and now Trump’s pick to run the CIA, said that there was “no intelligence to support” that claim. His statement contradicting the letter appeared valid, as the FBI assistant director for congressional affairs stated that the Bureau had “nothing to add” to Ratcliffe’s statement in response to questions from the Homeland Security Committee.
In another announcement, the president has ordered the White House Counsel to immediately craft a list of officials who should be “immediately granted” access to Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), in order to resolve an “unacceptable” backlog from the Biden administration. The expedited approval process would bypass the usual approval period, which is around 6 months for Top Secret clearance and 8 to 15 months for SCI. No specific officials were named in the order, which would effectively grant interim security clearance to whoever the president chooses if implemented.
