Washington — President Trump took executive action Monday to start revoking the security clearances of his former national security adviser, John Bolton, and dozens of intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 claiming emails found on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The executive action was part of a slew of measures signed by Mr. Trump in the hours after he was sworn into a second term in office and is one of his first steps he has taken to target those he considers political opponents now that he has returned to the White House.
Mr. Trump said in his order that the signers of the letter “willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.”
“This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country,” the order states. “And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the nation has been imperiled.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to former President Joe Biden, was stolen. He continued to push his accusations about the last election as recently as Monday, when he told supporters after his inauguration that the 2020 contest was “totally rigged.”
The letter at issue was signed by 51 former intelligence officials and released in October 2020 after the New York Post reported on emails recovered from a laptop computer discovered at a Delaware repair shop. The owner of the shop said the laptop was left by Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, in 2019.
“[T]he arrival on the US 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,” the officials wrote in their letter.
They said that they did not know if the emails are “genuine or not” and did not have evidence that Russia was involved, but added that their “experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
Among those who signed the letter — and are named in Mr. Trump’s order — are former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden and former CIA Director John Brennan. Two of the 51 signatories have since died.
The president accused the officials of coordinating with the Biden campaign to issue the letter. His order instructs the director of national intelligence, in consultation with the head of the CIA, to pull their security clearances, if they are still active.
The order targets Bolton, who served for more than a year as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser during his first term and wrote a book about his time in the role.
The president accused Bolton of publishing sensitive information and said the book’s publication “created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.”
