Former CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday he hasn’t heard more from the White House roughly two weeks after President Trump announced he was revoking Brennan’s security clearance, leaving him in the dark about his clearance status.
“The only thing I’ve heard about my security clearances from the government is when Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the podium that my clearance had been stripped. I have not been contacted by anybody at all either before or since then,” Brennan said on MSNBC.
“So, whether or not my clearance has been stripped, I’m still uncertain about,” he continued. “But she said it. She read something from Donald Trump.”
{mosads}Sanders, the White House press secretary, read a statement from Trump at the start of the Aug. 15 briefing in which the president said he was revoking Brennan’s clearance and reviewing the statuses of several other officials.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Brennan, one of Trump’s most outspoken critics in the intelligence community, suggested the White House failed to follow the proper process for stripping clearances. He said he would expect to hear from an intelligence official about his clearances, but as of yet, nobody has reached out.
“I’m sure there are some people who are scratching their head right now who are, you know, maybe have to put together the memorandum to say why I was stripped of my clearances other than the fact that Mr. Trump might not like me, which is not a valid reason,” Brennan said.
“So I’m still waiting to hear,” he continued. “They have my contact information, but I have not yet heard yet.”
Trump framed revoking Brennan’s clearance as a matter of national security, arguing that the ex-CIA director lacked “objectivity and credibility.” The president accused Brennan of leveraging his status as a former government official to make “unfounded and outrageous” charges about his administration.
“Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets and facilities, the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos,” Trump said in the statement read by Sanders.
Trump said he is also reviewing the clearances of several former intelligence officials, many of whom have spoken critically of the president.
Dozens of members of the intelligence community condemned Trump’s decision to revoke Brennan’s clearance, and Brennan has pledged that he will continue to speak critically of the president. He has also said he will consider a lawsuit to block Trump from revoking additional clearances, a threat the president has welcomed.