According to a statement about Trump’s planned evening one professional actions, President-elect Donald Trump intends to halt the security clearances of dozens of former intelligence area officials who wrote an infamous letter about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election.
Among the article’s members were three former CIA executives, including John Brennan, as well as previous Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Is it still unknown whether all 51 participants are safety holders. Trump claimed in 2018 that he abused his political power to withdraw Brennan’s, but Brennan later claimed he was unsure whether the withdrawal actually occurred. The CIA was contacted by The Washington Examiner for remark.
The text became a battleground in the 2020 election. The 51 leaders alleged in the article that a troubling New York Post article about the Bidens may have contained Russian disinformation, casting doubt on the assertion.
The release of emails allegedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s boy Hunter on the US social scene, which included many of his time serving on the board of the Polish gas company Burisma, has all the typical markings of a Russian information operation, the officials wrote.
Joe Biden allegedly used his vice presidentship to strong-arm Ukraine for Hunter Biden’s personal gain, according to The New York Post. The outlet based its narrative on emails Rudy Giuliani, a former Trump lawyer, found hidden in a copy of Hunter Biden’s hard drive. According to The New York Post, a Delaware computer repair shop owner had provided Giuliani’s representative with the hard drive copy.
In the Delaware store in 2019, Hunter Biden had left his laptop and hard drive behind. In response to a subpoena, the shop owner later handed the laptop and original hard drive to the FBI later that year. During Hunter Biden’s trial in Delaware last year, an FBI official confirmed that the laptop and hard drive were real, but the official did not verify all of the information contained on the hard drive copies that Giuliani and other Republican operatives distributed to the New York Post and other media.
The letter, which was written by officials who had previously held senior positions in the government, had a significant weight, and resulted in former presidential candidate Joe Biden relying on it to refute the New York Post ‘s  report during the final debate.
House Republicans also discovered that one of the letter’s authors, former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell, had started it in part because he wanted to give Joe Biden a “talking point” for the debate. Morell told Congress that he was also genuinely concerned about Russian election meddling.
Despite producing such an important document at the height of a competitive presidential election, which was bound to have an impact on the race, Morell and the other signatories have continued to face criticism from Trump supporters.
Attorney Mark Zaid, who represents eight of the 51 signatories, told the Washington Examiner Trump’s executive action to suspend their security clearances would defy decades of precedent.
Zaid said,” Suspension of the security clearances of individuals who did nothing but, as private citizens, exercise their protected First Amendment rights would be contrary to decades of national security norms.” Given that many of the signatories spent their entire careers serving in apolitical capacity to protect the American people, such a move would be unprecedented and undeserved.
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Zaid added that the decision would be ineffective in the face of Trump’s calls to protect free speech, particularly on the social media apps X and TikTok.
It’s also ironic that the White House claims to support the restoration of freedom of speech and that it wants to end federal censorship at the same time that this Executive Order is issued, Zaib said.