The White House is maintaining that former CIA Director John Brennan no long has security clearance, despite Brennan’s claims that no one from the White House has formally contacted him since it announced early this month that it was barring his access to classified information.
“The President’s order went into effect immediately, and Mr. Brennan no longer has access to classified information,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told The Washington Post Tuesday.
But one senior White House official told the Post that the paperwork that would seal the deal has been delayed, while officials hunt for reasons to close off intelligence access to other current and former officials.
Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who works as a national security analyst for MSNBC, said on Tuesday that despite the blistering statement announcing the revocation of his clearance, he had not been officially contacted about the matter.
“The only thing I’ve heard about my security clearance from the government is when [White House press secretary] Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the podium that my clearance had been stripped,” he told MSNBC Tuesday. “I’ve not been contacted by anybody at all either before or since then. So whether or not my clearance has been stripped, I’m still uncertain about.”
The White House claimed that Brennan was using his former status as an intelligence official to make “outrageous allegations” against the Trump administration, but Trump essentially admitted that it was because of Brennan’s involvement in the Russia probe.
