Gabbard also revokes clearance for 51 former intelligence officials who signed a letter alleging the Hunter Biden laptop story to be Russian disinformation.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced on March 10 that she had revoked dozens of security clearances in accordance with President Donald Trump’s order.
Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and attorneys Mark Zaid, Andrew Weissman, and Norm Eisen were among those who lost clearances.
Gabbard also revoked the clearances of the 51 former U.S. intelligence officials who signed a letter alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop story had the “earmarks” of Russian disinformation. Former FBI employees testified to Congress in 2023 that the laptop was not disinformation.
In February, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that former President Joe Biden’s intelligence information would be “cut off immediately” and that his daily Intelligence briefings would stop.
The laptop was an issue in the 2020 presidential election, as critics said it contained information that could be negative about the former president’s son. He was later convicted of criminal tax and gun charges but was pardoned by his father shortly before the latter left the White House.
The October 2020 letter stated that “the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement–just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
Trump took action on Jan. 20, the first day of his second term, to revoke the security clearances of 50 former government officials, including his former national security adviser, John Bolton.
“Federal policymakers must be able to rely on analysis conducted by the Intelligence Community and be confident that it is accurate, crafted with professionalism, and free from politically motivated engineering to affect political outcomes in the United States,” stated the presidential action.
“The signatories [of the letter] willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.”