Trump Strips John Bolton of Security Clearance: ‘Reckless Treatment of Sensitive Information’

President Donald Trump has stripped his former national security advisor John Bolton of his security clearance.

Trump revoked the security clearances of Bolton and several other top Intelligence Community officials in an executive order on Monday.

The order specifically accuses Bolton of “reckless treatment of sensitive information.”

The White House notes that Bolton’s 2019 memoir was “rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government.”

It stated that Bolton’s book posed “a grave risk” of exposing classified material and undermined future presidents’ ability to request candid advice on matters of national security from their staff.

The executive order states:

“Former National Security Advisor John R. Bolton published a memoir for monetary gain after he was terminated from his White House position in 2019.

“The book was rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government.

“The memoir’s reckless treatment of sensitive information undermined the ability of future presidents to request and obtain candid advice on matters of national security from their staff.

“Publication also created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.

“To remedy these abuses of the public trust, this Order directs the revocation of any active or current security clearances held by:  (i) the former intelligence officials who engaged in misleading and inappropriate political coordination with the 2020 Biden presidential campaign; and (ii) John R. Bolton.”

The order also revokes the security clearances of 51 former U.S. intelligence officials who signed a letter discrediting credible reports about emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The letter was issued just weeks ahead of the 2020 presidential election in which Hunter Biden’s father, then-candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, was a contender.

The signatories said that the New York Post’s report about emails found on the laptop that Hunter Biden allegedly abandoned at a Delaware repair shop was false.

They insisted that the report was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

The emails detailed some of the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings in China and Ukraine.

Among the emails were conversations that appeared to tie Joe Biden to shady foreign influence peddling deals.

Trump’s executive order said that the signatories had “willfully weaponized” the intelligence community’s credibility to manipulate the political process by discrediting the reports to rig the 2020 election.

The 51 intelligence officials include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Jr., former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, former CIA Acting Director Michael J. Morell, and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Two of the 51 have since died.

The order accused the officials of engaging in partisan politics.

It also instructs the director of national intelligence to produce a report within 90 days outlining “any additional inappropriate activity that occurred within the Intelligence Community, by anyone contracted by the Intelligence Community or by anyone who held a security clearance” related to the letter, and potential disciplinary actions.

The letter was written in response to a New York Post report on data said to have been obtained from a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop.

The intelligence officials stated that emails referenced in the news story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The line was parrotted by the obedient liberal corporate media to discredit the report.

At the same time, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Fox News that the emails were not Russian disinformation.

This was a statement that the FBI did not contest.

The New York Post story alleged that Hunter Biden introduced his father to a top executive at the now-defunct Burisma Holdings while he was vice president.

Burisma was a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat.

Hunter Biden was paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to sit on the board, despite having zero experience in the energy sector.

After the letter was released, many prominent Democrats cited legacy media reports on the letter in response to questions raised in Congress about the emails.

In 2020, then-candidate Biden also cited the letter during a debate against opponent Trump.

It wasn’t until 2023, long after the 2020 election, that the letter’s credibility crumbled when Morell testified to Congress that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken “triggered” him to organize it in a bid to “help Vice President Biden in the debate.”

Trump’s order stated that senior CIA officials were aware of the letter’s contents and that multiple signatories held clearances at the time while maintaining “contractual relationships” with the CIA.

“This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country,” the order stated.

https://slaynews.com/news/trump-strips-john-bolton-security-clearance-reckless-treatment-sensitive-information/