Tulsi Gabbard pulls security clearances for top Biden officials, those who went after Trump

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Monday said she has stripped security clearances from dozens of former national security officials, the Manhattan district attorney who secured a felony conviction against Donald Trump and a lawyer who represented a government whistleblower that triggered the first impeachment case against Trump.

The decision is the latest example of the Trump administration’s unprecedented use of security clearances to go after perceived political opponents.

Gabbard’s move, announced on X, followed up on an executive order issued by President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration in January, which called for security clearances to be revoked for 49 former national security officials. The ex-officials had signed a letter more than four years ago suggesting Russia might have played a role in amplifying allegations about Biden’s son Hunter as part of a wider effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 election.

In his executive order, Trump accused the letter’s signatories of “misleading and inappropriate political coordination” with Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

Trump’s order also called on the director of national intelligence to review the security clearances of others in and outside government who engaged in “inappropriate activity” related to the letter. The former senior officials have repeatedly denied Trump’s claim.

Gabbard said she had revoked security clearances and barred access to classified information for Anthony Blinken, former secretary of state in the Biden administration; Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor; and Lisa Monaco, who oversaw prosecutions against Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

In keeping with a previous vow by Trump, Gabbard said the daily intelligence briefing for the president would not be shared with former President Joe Biden.

Traditionally, the presidential daily briefing has been shared with former presidents, but Biden suspended the practice for Trump.

Gabbard also canceled the security clearance for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud judgment against Trump last year. In that case, a judge found that Trump defrauded banks by inflating his net worth in financial statements. The DNI also revoked the security clearance of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who secured a conviction against Trump over a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

Under Gabbard’s action, Mark Zaid, a lawyer who has represented whistleblowers in the intelligence community for years, was stripped of his security clearance. Zaid represented an intelligence officer who filed a whistleblower complaint to Congress in 2019 over a phone call during Trump’s first term, in which he appeared to press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to take actions to help the President’s 2020 re-election campaign. The complaint prompted an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives. Trump was not convicted. 

Zaid said under the law, he was entitled to due process over his security clearance. 

“Not surprisingly, as I would expect in an authoritarian state, I have received none. It is patently obvious this action is nothing but petty retaliation because I represent my clients effectively in holding the Trump Administration accountable for its actions,” Zaid said in an email.

Zaid has had a security clearance for nearly 25 years, he said. During Trump’s first term, the then Trump administration granted Zaid a higher level top secret clearance for a whistleblower case involving a Department of Homeland Security case, he said.

Kevin Carroll, who has represented intelligence officers suing the government, said the move against Zaid could force whistleblowers to look for other, more risky ways to call attention to their concerns. 

“We shouldn’t want whistleblowers in the intelligence community going to Julian Assange. We should want them going to security cleared lawyers such as Mark Zaid,” Carroll said.

One former national security official said the decision will hamper the Trump administration as it contends with an array of global threats, because they will be deprived of consulting with their predecessors who may have insights to share.

“It doesn’t impact the people who had clearances. It impacts the people in the government who might need to consult with them,” the former official said. “They won’t have the benefit of reaching out to former senior officials who have dealt with serious ongoing threats.”

Trump last week said he is scrapping clearances for attorneys at the prominent Washington law firm of Covington & Burling. The firm, which employs lawyers who worked for previous Democratic presidents, had assisted former special counsel Jack Smith, who led prosecutions against Trump over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

After Trump won re-election last year, both cases were dismissed. The Justice Department’s policy bars prosecuting a sitting president.