On Monday, Townhall reported that Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced that President Trump is looking to strip former White House officials of their security clearance.
“Frankly, I was shocked that Hillary, the chief culprit, was omitted,” said retired Col. James Williamson commenting on the list of names that the WH is looking to strip of their security clearance.
The White House announcement follows a report that Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, as well as Sen. Rand Paul and other lawmakers, are calling for former Obama administration official John Brennan to be stripped on his security clearance. Rand Paul said that he planned to ask President Trump to revoke it.
In the press briefing on Monday, Sarah Sanders mentioned the names of those who could have their security clearance revoked. Not surprisingly, all of these names have one thing in common: They have been highly critical of President Trump.
However, there is one name surprisingly absent from the list, that of the Democratic contender for the presidency in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton.
“Frankly, I was shocked that Hillary, the chief culprit, was omitted,” retired Col. James Williamson told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Williamson, who was in special operations for 30 years and has held a top-level security since 1982, is president of OPSEC, a nonpartisan organization representing retired special forces and intelligence community officials. (Daily Caller)
The Vice President of OPSEC, retired Col. James Warishuk, who also served on the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed with Williamson. Hillary Clinton “moved classified information from the State Department to a private server,” said Waurishuk, “Her clearance should have been immediately revoked and proper action taken to have her removed. She still carries that crime…“She was a risk…That is one of the things you look at. Is this person a risk? And yes, she was a risk. From that standpoint, she should have her clearance revoked.”
Back in 2015, OPSEC wrote to John Kerry who at the time was serving as Secretary of State, asking him to revoke Clinton’s security clearance in the aftermath of the Hillary Clinton email scandal.
“Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that this private server was inadequately protected from foreign intelligence penetration and malicious ‘hacking,'” said the letter to Kerry dated August 5, 2015.
“When you recklessly compromise Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information, you compromise the security of the United States. We now know Mrs. Clinton’s personal email and server contained national security intelligence classified at the highest possible level…because it was on her personal system and the information was classified at the time the emails were sent, that intelligence is now considered to be compromised…the standard procedure is that all individuals involved would have their access to classified information suspended pending an investigation,” said a second letter sent ten days later, dated August 15, 2015.
The letter also suggested revoking the security clearance of Clinton’s top three aides: Jacob Sullivan, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin.
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