# Trump revokes security clearance of John Brennan

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-revokes-security-clearance-of-john-brennan/819680
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [August 15, 2018, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-revokes-security-clearance-of-john-brennan/819680 "2018-08-15T19:16:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 87

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### Author: ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-revokes-security-clearance-of-john-brennan/819680/87 "2018-08-18T22:07:33Z")

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> [@Bricker](#):
>
> No. This is the kind of decision that if Obama had used against a Bush senior official would have produced essentially the exact same rhetoric from the exact same people, simply reversed. The bulk of people condemning Trump would be explaining how the Republicans simply want to see Obama fail, \*\*and that a security clearance cannot be used as a sword against the administration that grants it. \*\*And the same people now defending Trump would be apoplectic at the politicalization of clearances by Obama.

(highlighting mine.)

You appear, here, to be asserting that John Brennan has used his security clearance “as a sword against the administration that grants it.”

If that is what you are asserting, can you provide some examples of Brennan’s public utterances that could not have been made, if he had not had a security clearance?

Note that not even Trump’s ghostwriter has gone so far as to assert the existence of evidence that Brennan has actually made use of his security clearance in this way:

> [@](#):
>
> …Additionally, Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations – wild outbursts on the internet and television – about this Administration. Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary…

> **[Trump's full statement about why he revoked Brennan's security clearance](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-s-full-statement-about-why-he-revoked-brennan-s-n901066)**
>
> Read Donald Trump's full statement about why he revoked Brennan's security clearance.

In the White House statement, Trump’s ghostwriter offers two allegations about Brennan lying to Congress (in 2014, and about the use of the Steele dossier), but no allegations about Brennan making use of his security clearance as a means of facilitating attacks against the current Administration. The ghostwriter, instead, baldly asserts “lying” without offering any particulars about ‘lies’ that could be told only by someone with a security clearance.

The ghostwriter also complains that Brennan’s allegations could not have been made publicly without the “status” of being someone with a security clearance. That seems shaky, given the number of commentators on the news shows and writers of editorials who do not possess a security clearance, yet manage to get booked and published anyway.

So, apparently in your zeal to ‘prove’ that Liberals are Hypocrites, you have gone further than did Trump’s own ghostwriter, with your claim that Brennan has used his security clearance “as a sword.”

Can you back up that claim with any evidence? What has Brennan said that he could not have said, had his security clearance already expired?

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