Trump ‘immediately’ revokes Biden’s security clearance and daily briefing in act of revenge against predecessor
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Donald Trump says he will deny former president Joe Biden any access to classified information and courtesy briefings in an act of revenge against his predecessor.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he was “immediately revoking Joe Biden’s Security Clearances and stopping his daily Intelligence Briefings.” This followed a precedent Biden had set four years earlier when he instructed U.S. intelligence officials to halt any briefings with Trump, citing the then-former president’s “erratic behavior” after his 2020 election loss.
As elected officials, presidents do not hold security clearances but have traditionally been given courtesy briefings on an as-needed basis, such as when traveling abroad or when meeting with foreign government officials.
It’s unclear whether Biden has requested or received any such briefings since he left office last month.
Trump also claimed that former special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s possession of classified documents dating back to his time as a senator and vice president informed his decision.
In a misstatement of what Hur had actually written, Trump claimed that the former prosecutor “revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and “could not be trusted with sensitive information.”
Trump was referring to a section of Hur’s report in which the then-special counsel said he would not charge Biden with willfully retaining national defense information — the same charge Trump faced after hundreds of classified documents were found at his Mar-a-Lago residents during an August 2022 search — because it was unlikely that a jury would have convicted him.
Hur wrote that Biden’s lawyers could have easily presented him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and in doing so would have obtained an acquittal at trial.
Trump, who was charged with willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy and obstruction of justice but was returned to office by voters before the case could go to trial, further wrote that he would “always protect our National Security,” before adding: “JOE, YOU’RE FIRED. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
A spokesperson for former president Biden declined to comment when asked about Trump’s claim to have revoked a security clearance that never existed in the first place.
