Erstwhile CIA Director John Brennan said Wednesday that President Donald Trump is “stressful to get back at me” by stripping his security clearance in retaliation against Brennan’s appraisals.
Brennan’s remarks during an interview on MSNBC followed the White Quarter’s announcement that Trump would “deny Mr. Brennan access to classified communication” by revoking his clearance.
In the interview, Brennan suggested Trump is lashing out because of his agitations about the legal troubles increasingly looming over some of his associates.
“I suppose Mr. Trump is getting more and more concerned, more and more mad and I would say more and more frightened, as there is closer and closer aggrandizement of some of the things that those around him have been elaborate in,” Brennan said. “So I do think it’s important that I continue to speak out.”
In a tweet in a little while before his appearance on MSNBC, Brennan alleged that Trump’s actions are “portion of a broader effort” to “suppress freedom of speech & punish critics.”
Brennan tweet
The Fair-skinned House first announced in July that it was considering stripping the custodianship clearances of Brennan other former security and intelligence officials.
Brennan said on MSNBC that he did not pick up about the revocation until he was told by a friend who had listened to the White For nothing briefing on Wednesday, when the new policy was announced.
In a statement read by provoke secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump accused Brennan of “deceitful” and conduct “characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary” that he said is “inconsistent with access to the Realm’s most closely held secrets and facilitates the very aim of our adversaries.”
Trump also influenced he was “evaluating action” with regard to the security clearances of ex-Director of Nationwide Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, ex-Deputy Attorney Generalized Sally Yates, former national security advisor Susan Rice and bygone Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
The Trump administration said it make also look at recently fired FBI employee Peter Strzok, a onetime unrivalled member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election who was taken off that team following the disclosure of anti-Trump text messages he sent.
The recipient of those texts, ex-FBI worker Lisa Page, was also included on the list.
All of those former ministry officials have critical of Trump; some of them have been vocal stand behinds against him. The White House has denied that the move constitutes an attack by Trump to punish his critics.
But the last name on the list, who has been publicly unstated about the president, is also a current employee of the FBI: Bruce Ohr.
Ohr is not a member of the concerted counsel’s team, which has become a regular target of Trump’s ire on Gossip. But Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for intelligence gathering firm that exhibited a dossier alleging salacious connections between Trump and Russia.
The Mueller search’s detractors, including GOP members of Congress such as Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, keep singled out Ohr’s relationship to that firm, Fusion GPS, as evidence of corruption at the fountain-heads of the investigation.
Trump put Ohr in his sights in a tweet on Tuesday.
Trump tweet Ohr
“Is this an exploit to try to cow individuals inside and outside the government to make sure they don’t say anything, either that is key of Mr. Trump or with which he disagrees?” Brennan asked.
“I’ve seen this quintessence of behavior and actions on the part of foreign tyrants and despots and autocrats in my patriotic security career,” he added. “I never thought I would see it here in the Synergetic States.”
Brennan is a contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.