The man who knew too much
What was so threatening about the former CIA chief? Beyond Brennan’s sheer cussedness, I’d guess that Trump was frightened — and remains so to this day — about just how much Brennan knows about his secrets. And by that, I don’t just mean his dealings with Russian oligarchs and presidents but the way he moved through a world of fixers, flatterers and money launderers.
Hmm, yes, Brennan probably does know a lot about Trump’s secrets. So…it wasn’t particularly clever to piss him off further, was it.
Brennan, like Comey, was there at the beginning of this investigation. Trump must have asked himself: What does Brennan know? What did he learn from the CIA’s deep assets in Moscow, and from liaison partners such as Britain, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands? Does Trump think Brennan will be a less credible witness without a security clearance?
Well, he’s dumb enough. He’s dumb enough to think that removing the security clearance actually removed the knowledge from Brennan’s brain.
For someone who has never had information stay in his brain long enough to get tired, that probably makes perfect sense.
Maybe he thinks by removing the security clearance, he makes it illegal somehow for Brennan to tell what he knows about Trump. That would be the sort of weird misunderstanding that would make sense to him, I imagine.
Well, at least one thing just became clear. In the Statement from the President yesterday, where it cites “the risks posed by [Brennan’s] erratic conduct and behavior,” Trump is striking against the eligibility of Brennan and his other critics that he listed to have clearances.
When Trump fired Comey from the FBI, Comey was “read out” of his clearance(s) by signing standard debriefing forms. Comey still has eligibility for a clearance, based on a determination made by adjudication of the results of an investigation.
In other words, Congress could still offer Comey a temporary clearance for the purpose of telling Congress classified things he knows, because Comey still has all the following things in place except for his clearance and access on the right:
Investigation → Adjudication → Determination → Eligibility → Clearance → Access.
Of course, someone can lose a clearance — and their underlying eligibility — if they do something bad that leads to adverse information against them — like gambling debt, or DUI, or shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Trump is innovative in his Statement from the President to say POTUS can finger his political critics as a security “risk” as adverse information into the process I showed above.
iknlast wrote
Well yes, if Trump can remove the eligibility of his critics as I wrote above, then yes, it would be illegal for Trump’s critics to tell Congress classified information they know about Trump.
What Trump is maneuvering to do here is very ugly, but on the other hand, people like Brennan and Comey are people who know people who know what they know, so if Congress wanted to listen, then Brennan and Comey could refer Congress to talk to those people.
Actually, Dave, I wasn’t speaking about classified information. Of course it has an impact on classified information. I was referring to the possibility that Trump believes it means he can’t give them any information, even things that are not classified but might be useful in the investigation.