What a bunch of incompetents. What a coven of maroons.
(Thank God for their incapacity!)
Donald Trump’s feeble clownshow can’t even get the “papers, please” part of fascism right.
President Spoiled Brat says following through is boring and stupid and you can’t make him.
The “reign of Trump” = Kleptocratic Keystone Kops administration.
@TPM–
There’s a typo in the first sentence. “…Brennan no long has security…”
I don’t know whether someone would be actively told their clearance was revoked (probably) or just find out the next time they tried to do something that required it. Given Brennan’s consultations with former colleagues, someone would have to be informed.
No one who ever worked in Washington anywhere near the intelligence community would believe this bald faced lie. The reason that the paperwork has been “delayed” is that the CIA has refused to carry out the President’s clearly illegal Order.
Under current law and executive orders, it is the CIA - not the president - that has the obligation to make a decision, and that decision must follow due process procedures. Not only would the CIA’s following of those procedures not find any legal basis for lifting Brennan’s security clearance, they would establish beyond any doubt that Trump’s Order was not based on law, at all, but on a clearly unconstitutional exercise of brute power by Trump against a critic. The CIA’s decision would be immediately appealed on constitutional and administrative law grounds, and would be reversed. In the process, any credibility that Haspel had would be destroyed.
Col. Kurtz on this Whitehouse:
“The incompetence, the incompetence”…
Meanwhile, here in Richmond, the woman running against Dave Brat discovered that her CIA security clearance information just happened to be “leaked” to the press by a Republican PAC. Weird, huh? A mistake by the post office, says the PAC. If Watergate happened today, it would be off the front page in two days.
IOW, Trump thinks he’s ordered something that he has no authority to do and Brennan keeps his clearance. Typical, but why isn’t this more publicly known? Keeping the moron ignorantly blissful so that he doesn’t do something really stupid?
‘During this difficult transition period between Preznit Trump announcing the secret pulling of former director Brennan’s clearance some number of week, we’re calling
on former director Brennan’s deep sense of patriotism, honor, complete discretion and vast knowledge in the area of national security to refrain from testing to see if he’s in fact still cleared until we can figure out how an administration goes about pulling security clearances. Although we have yet to reach out to contact Mr. Brennan (because everyone here who knows his number refuses and everyone else who’d be okay with doing it doesn’t know how to work a phone or is too scared to even attempt the call.’
Well when you put it that way then who has egg on their face?
^^ This. I don’t understand how Brennan seems unable to determine the current facts. Can’t he just make a request for classified information and then note whether it was rejected, and upon what grounds?
If I think my net connection is down, I don’t just wax philosophical about it, I try google and see what happens. Surely there is some canary ready for the mine.
The latest Josh Marshall Podcast makes it sound like US law holds that the POTUS is the source of all classification decisions, and that there’s no obvious reason a president couldn’t intervene in individual cases.
Now, whether the current case would be rejected as a violation of Brennan’s 1A rights is a separate question, but I very much got the impression Trump’s order was plausible albeit unusual.
As I understand it, legally this is correct. Practically, I am not so sure. Presidents never have gotten their hands dirty in this way.
That would be playing with fire under the current administration. Someone could “accidentally” give him access and then he could be subject to criminal prosecution. (Not necessarily successful prosecution, but that would hardly matter)
Obviously someone could tell him whether the paperwork status has changed, but at his level that might be classified too…