President Donald Trump has prohibited his former national security adviser John Bolton and the intelligence officials who called the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation from having unescorted access to secure federal buildings.
The 49 officials include James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence during the Obama administration. It also includes former CIA directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and Michael Hayden. Brennan and Panetta both served in that role under President Barack Obama, while Hayden was CIA director for President George W. Bush and, very briefly, Obama.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Clapper, Brennan, Panetta, Hayden, and dozens of others from the intelligence community signed a letter assessing that the emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop and reported by the New York Post had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The letter states that the emails “would be consistent with Russian objectives,” asserting that the Russian government sought to boost Trump and undermine the candidacy of his rival for president at the time, Joe Biden.
Trump’s previous executive order stripping its signatories and Bolton of security clearances states that “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 Jan. 20 executive order stated.
Trump’s new memo expands on that action, ordering federal agency heads “to revoke unescorted access to secure U.S. Government facilities from the 50 former intelligence officials named in the executive order.”
“These individuals no longer possess a need to access secure facilities, and as outlined in the Executive Order, do not have the appropriate security clearances to access classified information,” the memo states.
Trump’s memo is directed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, as well as the director of national intelligence and head of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The Senate has not voted on the confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, or Scott Kupor, Trump’s nominee for OPM director.
The acting directors of national intelligence and OPM are Lora Shiao and Charles Ezell, respectively.
The memo instructs the OPM director to provide the memo to any agency not addressed by the memo if one of the 50 intelligence officials received a security clearance from it.
It also instructs federal entities to inform any private entities through whom the individuals obtained security clearances that those individuals are now barred from accessing classified information or visiting secure federal facilities while unescorted.
