Washington — President Trump said Friday night he is “immediately revoking” former President Joe Biden’s security clearance and will bar him from receiving intelligence briefings.
“There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Mr. Trump said he was taking the action because Biden did the same to him in 2021, setting a precedent.
Biden told CBS News in February 2021 that Mr. Trump could not be trusted with having access to classified information because of his “erratic behavior.”
“I’d rather not speculate out loud,” Biden said at the time. “I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
The briefings are provided to former presidents after they leave office as a courtesy.
Mr. Trump also cited a report from Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified materials after his vice presidency.
“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.
The special counsel made a number of observations about the then-president’s memory that enraged Biden’s allies and provided political ammunition to Republicans, including that he could present himself to a jury as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur ultimately declined to seek criminal charges against Biden for his handling of the documents and said the evidence did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden had violated the law.
In one of his first executive actions since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump revoked the security clearances of dozens of former intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 claiming that emails found on a laptop owned by Biden’s son, Hunter, bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. Mr. Trump also pulled the clearance of his former national security adviser, John Bolton, who has been intensely critical of him, as well as that of Gen. Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.
