Several Republican lawmakers want Congress to strip the security clearances of dozens of former U.S. intelligence officials who worked against President Trump in 2020 by asserting that information in the laptop of Hunter Biden was likely Russian disinformation.
Republicans have called for accountability from the 51 intelligence officials who were accused of helping Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden, Mr. Trump’s opponent in 2020, by issuing a joint letter stating that the information in the laptop bore the hallmarks of an operation by Moscow.
Hunter Biden is the president’s oft-troubled son, and the FBI later verified the authenticity of the scandalous material in the laptop.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “It should be an option” to yank the officials’ security clearances. Mr. Graham told The Washington Times that each official must be held accountable and that he plans on writing a letter to each one soon. He did not specify what the letter would say.
“I think we should scrub all the legacy clearances to see whether the people need to have them and for what purpose, and unless they’re working for a company in a role that makes sense, they should be taken away,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican. “Most on that list [of 51], I would include in that scrubbing.”
Rep. Andy Biggs, Arizona Republican, said the 51 intelligence officials “should all lose their security clearances.”
Stripping their security clearances is one of the first items he wants to discuss with fellow committee members, though he did not specify whether he would do so on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee or the Judiciary Committee.
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance pledged during the campaign that the incoming Trump administration would strip the security clearances of the 51 former intelligence officials “who said that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.”
The Trump administration could revoke security clearance without congressional action, but some Republican lawmakers said doing so through legislation would ensure the punishment is meted out and that no clearances are left untouched.
The co-signers include former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, now an analyst for CNN; former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, now a CNN contributor; former CIA head and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who now runs a public policy institute at California State University; former CIA Director John O. Brennan, currently an analyst for NBC and MSNBC; former National Intelligence Council chair Thomas Fingar, who now teaches at Stanford University; and Rick Ledgett, former National Security Agency deputy director, now a director at M&T Bank.
Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper and others have said they did not lie in the letter. Mr. Clapper said the signatories were merely “raising a yellow flag.”
Although Republicans will control the Senate next year and are on their way to control the House, legislation to revoke their clearances will face an uphill battle in the upper chamber.
Rep. Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican, called for all the letter signers to “lose their clearance.”
“What they have done is highly unethical, immoral, and it’s terrible for democracy and terrible for our country,” she said, “these guys that lied about Trump and targeted him.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who also called for the letter signers’ clearances to be revoked, cautioned that a faction of Republicans in Congress is not on board with taking action.
“I hope [Congress does something]. Yeah, I’m more on the wing of holding people accountable, though not all my colleagues are. But I definitely hope so,” she said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told The Times that there was no current discussion about bringing legislation to the floor that would deal with the security clearances of the 51 intelligence officials.
The letter signed by the pro-Biden officials just before the 2020 election said that negative pictures and messages found on the Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign.
This enabled his father to discredit the laptop and its contents during presidential debates and major media appearances.
Several of the signatories, the New York Post reported in June, were active CIA contractors when they made the false claim about the laptop being part of a Russian disinformation scheme.
The CIA confirmed that former CIA acting Director Michael Morell, who previously told Congress he organized the Oct. 19, 2020, letter to give Mr. Biden a “talking point” before the debate against Mr. Trump, was a contractor at the time he organized the letter.
Another co-signer, former CIA Inspector General David Buckley, was also a contractor when the letter surfaced, according to an interim report from two House committees investigating the matter.
The terms of their contracts and compensation were vague, and the House committees believed signers may have been contractors.
The letter, distributed through Politico on Oct. 20, 2020, described all the signatories as “former” officials.
Mr. Trump wanted to remove Mr. Brennan’s security clearance in 2018, but Mr. Brennan said in 2019 that his clearance was never revoked.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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