We begin today’s roundup with USA Today’s editorial on Donald Trump’s threats to revoke security clearances of those he dislikes:
While Brennan will survive just fine without a security clearance, stripping one from federal officials in sensitive jobs kills their effectiveness. Trump said Friday that he would likely pull the security clearance of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, who played a modest role in the Russian probe during its early days.
Who's next to lose his clearance? Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises the Mueller investigation? Mueller himself?
Thankfully, steps are already being taken to curtail Trump's authority, beyond the bipartisan outcry from former intelligence officials.
The Democratic vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, is threatening legislation to block the president from punishing or intimidating critics by revoking their security clearances.
Adam Entous at The New Yorker highlights just how far Trump wants to go in his unprecedented tactic of revoking clearances for purely personal reasons:
At the time, some of Trump’s most fervent supporters in the White House saw former Obama Administration officials as powerful enemies who threatened the new President’s rule, and they agitated for punishing them by revoking their security clearances. The idea was rebuffed by the national-security adviser at the time, H. R. McMaster, who signed a memo extending the clearances of his predecessors at the N.S.C., Republicans and Democrats alike. As Trump stepped up his public and private attacks on Obama, some of the new President’s advisers thought that he should take the extraordinary step of denying Obama himself access to intelligence briefings that were made available to all of his living predecessors. Trump was told about the importance of keeping former Presidents, who frequently met with foreign leaders, informed. In the end, Trump decided not to exclude Obama, at the urging of McMaster.