Former CIA chief John Brennan was not happy about President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel his security clearance, claiming the only reason he maintained a clearance was to provide advice to the president.
Brennan, who unrepentantly signed a letter falsely claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, was Barack Obama’s director of the CIA and played a massive role in the Russia hoax, along with reportedly dismissing intelligence that Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
During a recent interview on MSNBC, Brennan criticized Trump for preventing him from giving the president advice on national security.
“The only reason why I still had a security clearance, as I have for the past number of years since I left government service, was for the benefit of the government, so that if the CIA or another government agency wanted to call me in to discuss the classified matter, they could do that,” Brennan said.
“It was really for the government’s benefit,” he claimed. “It was to facilitate those classified discussions with myself as well as with former directors as well as other former members of the intelligence community that had those clearances.”
Brennan said Trump’s executive order stripping him of the clearance was “bizarre” because Trump allegedly “misrepresented” his claim that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
After the “laptop from hell” story broke in 2020, 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter that insinuated Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. The letter was peddled by Politico under the title “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
The 51 signatories seemingly knew the Politico story was false at the time because the FBI had the laptop that Hunter abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. President Joe Biden cited the story during a 2020 presidential debate with Trump to discredit the laptop’s contents. The story was reportedly planted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken for Biden to use during the event.
After Trump inauguration in 2025, Trump stripped the security clearances of all intelligence officials who claimed Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
The executive order read:
Section 1. Purpose. In the closing weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign, at least 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to issue a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business. Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Before being issued, the letter was sent to the CIA Prepublication Classification Review Board, the body typically assigned to formally evaluate the sensitive nature of documents prior to publication. Senior CIA officials were made aware of the contents of the letter, and multiple signatories held clearances at the time and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.
Federal policymakers must be able to rely on analysis conducted by the Intelligence Community and be confident that it is accurate, crafted with professionalism, and free from politically motivated engineering to affect political outcomes in the United States. The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions. 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. And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled.