Brennan: Trump’s Behavior ‘Treasonous,’ Considering Legal Action Over Clearance
Talking Points Memo
by Matt Shuham
Former CIA Director John Brennan said Sunday that he was considering taking President Donald Trump to court over the revocation of his security clearance.
Brennan also said the President’s actions had been “treasonous.”
Repeating what he’d told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Friday night, Brennan told the NBC News’ Chuck Todd that he’d been “contacted by a number of lawyers” about his case.
“They have already given me their thoughts about the basis for a complaint, an injunction to try to prevent him from doing this in the future,” Brennan said of the lawyers he’d spoken to.
The ACLU and other groups have said it’s a violation of the former CIA director’s First Amendment rights to strip his security clearance in retaliation for his criticism of the President, which the White House has said was the case. (Trump also said he revoked Brennan’s clearance as punishment for his work at the start of the probe of Russian election interference.)
“If my clearances and my reputation, as I’m being pulled through the mud now, if that’s the price I’m going to pay to prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me it’s a small price to pay. So I am going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future.”
“And if it means going to court, I will do that.”
On Friday, Brennan and Maddow debated the wording of a tweet he’d written, that Trump’s behavior at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin had been “nothing short of treasonous,” which Maddow said “means treason.”
“I didn’t mean that he committed treason,” Brennan said at one point Friday.
On Sunday, Brennan said: “I called his behavior treasonous, which is to betray one’s trust, and to aid and abet the enemy, and I stand very much by that claim.” |
