Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) lashed out at President Trump’s decision to strip former CIA director John Brennan of his security clearance, arguing the move was driven by “spite and malice” and meant to silence a critic.
“The abuse of the powers of public office to silence critics, punish political enemies is exactly what goes on in dictatorships in banana republics and we’re not one of those, thank god,” Schumer said from the Senate floor.
Schumer was referencing comments from GOP Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), who has compared Trump’s decision on the security clearance fight to a “banana republic kind of thing.”
{mosads}
Trump sparked bipartisan backlash last week after he stripped Brennan of his security clearance. The White House has said he is weighing taking the same action for several former intelligence officials, including former FBI Director James Comey and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Schumer added that the action against Brennan, who has emerged as a vocal critic of Trump, was a “gratuitous act of political retribution taken out of spite and malice.”
“It was an attempt to silence critics of the president, something the president regularly tries to do usually unsuccessfully,” he said.
Trump has also threatened to revoke the security clearance of Bruce Ohr — a Justice Department official who has come under fire from Republicans for his links to Fusion GPS, the firm behind a controversial dossier on Trump.
Schumer called such a move “appalling” and “out of bounds,” questioning if Trump would next try to revoke the security clearances of individuals working on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the 2016 election.
“There’s enormous potential for gross abuse of presidential power. Congress on a bipartisan basis ought to make sure that the president does not politicize the security clearance process,” he said.
Schumer’s speech comes as Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, filed an amendment on Monday that would limit Trump’s ability to revoke a security clearance unilaterally.
But that measure faces an uphill fight to getting a vote as part of the Senate’s debate on a mammoth Defense, Health and Human Services, Education and Labor spending bill.
Updated at 4:40 p.m.