President Donald Trump twice retaliated against his former National Security Advisor John Bolton since taking office Monday.
CNN reported Tuesday that Trump moved to have Bolton’s Secret Service protection terminated.
‘I am not at all surprised that President Trump has made this choice,’ Bolton wrote on X. ‘Although I have critiques of President Biden’s national-security strategies, he still decided to extend Secret Service protection to me again in 2021.’
Trump pushed out Bolton, his third national security adviser, in September 2019.
Bolton published a tell-all book about his time working for Trump in June 2020, ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
During Trump’s term, the Justice Department attempted to block the publication of Bolton’s book, arguing that he should have awaited a White House review to check for any classified information.
After leaving government service it was revealed that Bolton had been targeted for assassination by Iran.
‘In 2022, the Justice Department pressed charges against an official from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for trying to hire a hitman to target me,’ Bolton added. ‘The threat persists, as evident from a recent arrest related to a plot to assassinate President Trump.’
President Donald Trump has twice gone after his former National Security Advisor John Bolton since taking office Monday – terminating his Secret Service detail and starting the process to remove his security clearance
Former National Security John Bolton has become a top Trump critic.
‘The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call,’ he added.
Bolton was also included – despite not signing onto the letter – with the group of 51 former intelligence officials that Trump moved to have their security clearances revoked.
Trump took action against the surviving 49 officials – plus Bolton – who called into question the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election.
Fifty-one individuals signed onto a letter in October 2020 saying that the laptop, first revealed in The New York Post, had ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operative.’
Trump has long vowed revenge on those officials – which include James Clapper, the director of national intelligence under former President Barack Obama, and John Brennan and Leon Panetta, who both served as Obama’s CIA director.
The president was angered that the damaging information discovered on the laptop didn’t ruin President Joe Biden’s chances of victory that year.
Trump signed an executive order Monday that targets the clearances of 50 people in all, including the 49 surviving signatories of the letter.
The order directs the CIA to work with the office of the Director of National Intelligence to begin the process of revoking the clearances.
The action also sets up a potential court challenge from ex-officials seeking to maintain access to sensitive government information.
‘The president has a lot of authority when it comes to security clearances. The problem the White House will run into is, if they depart from their existing procedures, they could set up a judicial appeal for these 51 people – and it will probably be a class-action suit since they´re all in alike or similar circumstances,’ said Dan Meyer, a Washington lawyer who specializes in the security clearance and background check process.
It was not clear how many of the former officials still maintain security clearances, though Mark Zaid, who represents eight people who signed the letter, said that he did not believe many did and that the Trump’s action functioned largely as a ‘public policy message to his right-wing base’
Those on the list include former CIA Director John Brennan (left) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right)
President Donald Trump has complained that Hunter Biden’s laptop should have been a bigger issue in the 2020 race – but the ex-intelligence officials cast doubt on its legitimacy by tying the leak of the content to Russia
He said he would sue the administration on behalf of any client who wanted to challenge the order.
‘There’s nothing in this that shows me, regardless of presidential authority, that this action is not subject to existing law and policy that mandates procedural and substantive due process,’ Zaid said.
A Clinton-era executive order says people determined to be ineligible for a clearance are to be provided a ‘comprehensive and detailed’ explanation of the conclusion.
The signatories of the October 2020 letter wrote that they didn’t know whether the emails were authentic or not but pointed a finger at Russia.
But Trump’s director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe – also his current pick to lead the CIA – contradicted that assessment by saying there was no intelligence to support the idea that Russia had anything to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The FBI, which was conducting its own criminal investigations into the younger Biden, seemed to back up Ratcliffe’s statement by telling Congress in a letter it had nothing to add to what he had said.
Hunter Biden was subsequently convicted of both tax and gun charges, but was pardoned last month by his father.
Though courts are historically reluctant to weigh in on disputes involving security clearances, the unilateral suspension by Trump is a departure from standard protocol in which individual executive branch agencies would be tasked with creating an investigation into a person’s fitness for a clearance or whether it should be revoked.
Throughout his first presidency, Trump fumed about an intelligence community that he believed had been politicized against him, repeatedly citing the investigation into ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign.
