New Administration Highlights: Trump Revokes Biden's Security Clearance

New York Times

08-02-2025

Pinned
President Trump said he was revoking former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s security clearances on Friday as retribution for Mr. Biden having rescinded his four years ago in response to what Mr. Biden called Mr. Trump's 'erratic behavior' around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Mr. Trump made no effort to disguise his reasoning. He did not accuse Mr. Biden of any security breaches. Instead, he wrote on social media that there was 'no need' for Mr. Biden to continue having access to classified information, exactly parroting the justification Mr. Biden offered in 2021 for denying briefings to Mr. Trump.
'Joe, you're fired. Make America Great Again!' Mr. Trump wrote in his signature all-caps style.
As a practical matter, the decision will have little import. Former presidents get episodic briefings partly as a courtesy, and partly because, in times of a more bipartisan spirit, sitting presidents sometimes call former occupants of the office for advice, or to ask about their experience in handling a delicate diplomatic negotiation.
But there seems to be no chance of Mr. Trump ever calling his predecessor. Instead, the security clearance revocation serves primarily to add to a remarkable list of grievance-driven acts by Mr. Trump in his first 19 days in office.
The president has already withdrawn federal protection for five former members of his first administration. Those included some officials — former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser — whom a stream of intelligence suggests Iran has plotted to kill.
On the first day of his presidency, Mr. Trump signed an order revoking the security clearances for 51 former senior intelligence officials who signed an open letter in 2020 saying that the discovery of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden's son, 'has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.' Later investigation found no apparent Russian involvement.
But even then, Mr. Trump stopped short of going after his predecessor, who earlier in the day he had waved goodbye to as Mr. Biden left the Capitol in a helicopter.
That hesitance ended on Friday evening, as Mr. Trump headed to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate and club. He then plans to go to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday.
'I think it is just performative,' Beth Sanner, who gave Mr. Trump his highly classified Presidential Daily Brief during his first term, said in an interview on Friday night.
'The only reason a former president needs briefing is to prepare before they speak to foreign leaders, or because they have some other kind of engagement that relates to foreign policy,' Ms. Sanner said. 'But there is no real reason to do it except before those moments, and in this case it's hard to imagine Biden is really going to need it.'
In his social media posting, Mr. Trump cited an investigation by Robert K. Hur, a special counsel appointed to examine how a number of classified documents from Mr. Biden's time as vice president ended up in his garage. (Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden was not prosecuted over his handling of classified material.)
'The Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from 'poor memory' and, even in his 'prime,' could not be trusted with sensitive information,' Mr. Trump wrote, in the latter case misstating the report's findings. 'I will always protect our national security.'
The timing was curious: All week there have been questions about whether young employees of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency had appropriate security clearances to enter payment systems in the Treasury Department, or gain access to personnel records at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, acting on his behalf, were dismantling.
Mr. Trump was clearly riled by the memory, four years ago, of how Mr. Biden stripped him of his clearance.
'What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?' Mr. Biden said in an interview with Norah O'Donnell of CBS News at the time. 'What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?'
Mr. Biden's move to deprive Mr. Trump of the traditional briefings was surprising at the time: Continued briefings for ex-presidents have been an institutional staple of Washington for decades, a bipartisan tradition in an era of greater and greater partisanship. But in breaking a precedent, it also seemed to create one.
The obvious question raised by Mr. Trump's action is whether he considers it a final settling of scores between the country's second-oldest and oldest presidents, or whether it is an opening salvo.
Already this week Mr. Trump has been hunting down Biden-era appointees and firing them, even from institutions — like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts or Voice of America — that have long enjoyed an air of bipartisanship. Republicans in Congress have promised more investigations into the Biden presidency, which Mr. Trump often called the 'Biden Crime Family,' which could put those close to Mr. Biden in legal jeopardy.
Theoretically, Mr. Trump could even pull Mr. Biden's Secret Service detail. But that seems unlikely, because it could invite reciprocal action against Mr. Trump when he leaves office.