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Former CIA Director John Brennan said President Donald Trump “misrepresented the facts” in the Hunter Biden laptop story after his security clearance was revoked Tuesday.
In an executive order, Trump revoked the security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter that said the release of emails from a laptop had “all the classic hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.” Many of them were outspoken supporters during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign against Trump.
The signatories said in the letter that they do not know whether the emails are authentic, and that we have no evidence of Russian involvement – simply that our experience makes us strongly suspect that the Russian government played a significant role in this case. “
Brennan, who was among the signatories, called the order “strange” and said Trump had distorted the letter.
JIM JORDAN ‘CONFIRMED’ HUNTER LAPTOP LETTER WAS ‘ALL POLITICAL’ AT JOHN BRENNAN’S CLOSED HEARING
Former CIA director John Brennan called President Donald Trump’s view on Hunter Biden’s laptop story. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“The signatories of the letter falsely suggested that this news was part of a Russian disinformation campaign,” Trump said. executive order said of “former intelligence officials who engaged in deceptive and inappropriate political coordination with the 2020 Biden presidential campaign.”
“He misrepresented the facts in that order because it said we assumed the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation,” Brennan said on MSNBC on Tuesday. “No, we said that these are all characteristic features of Russian information operations, including the injection of accurate information, which we talked about in that letter.”
“Again, it was just, you know, his attempt to get back at those individuals who have openly and publicly criticized him in the past, and I think that was perfectly legitimate,” he said.
Other officials named in the EO include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr., former CIA Director Michael Hayden, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Three days after the letter was released, Biden used it as a talking point in the final 2020 presidential debate to rebut Trump’s criticism.
“There are 50 former national intelligence officials who have said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan,” Biden said during the debate.
Shortly after taking office, President Trump revoked the security clearances of Brennan and 50 others by executive order. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
In 2023, it was reported that Art The Ministry of Justice knew As of December 2019, Hunter Biden’s laptop contained “reliable evidence” and was “not tampered with in any way.”
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Brennan said that Trump had previously stated this revoke his security clearance in 2018but the admission was not taken away from him.
“The only reason I still had a security clearance, as I have for the last few years after I left government service, was in the interest of the government, so that if the CIA or another government agency wanted to call me to discuss a classified matter , they could do it,” Brennan said.
He added: “And so it was really in favor of the government. It was to facilitate classified discussions with me, as well as former directors, and other former members of the intelligence community who had such clearances.’
Former CIA Director John Brennan discussed the executive order Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Andrea Mitchell Report.” (MSNBC screenshot)
Brennan appears regularly on MSNBC as a senior national security analyst and is one of Trump’s fiercest critics.
Appeared online in February 2024, Brennan argued that Russia uses Republican politicians “as tools”.
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Fox News’ David Spector contributed to this report.
