President Donald Trump on Monday dared John Brennan to sue him after the former CIA director told reporters he was considering legal action against the president over the decision to revoke Brennan’s security clearance.
“I hope John Brennan, the worst CIA Director in our country’s history, brings a lawsuit,” Trump wrote Monday morning in a tweet. “It will then be very easy to get all of his records, texts, emails and documents to show not only the poor job he did, but how he was involved with the Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt. He won’t sue!”
The president said in a subsequent tweet that Brennan was being defended by people in the intelligence community and beyond because security clearances are “worth great prestige and big dollars” and “everybody wants to keep their Security Clearance.”
“It certainly isn’t because of the good job he did!” the president wrote. “He is a political ‘hack.’”
More than 200 former U.S. intelligence officials have signed letters condemning the decision to strip Brennan of his security clearance, Axios reported.
Brennan said Sunday in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he had been contacted by "a number of lawyers."
“They have already given me their thoughts about the basis for a complaint, an injunction to try to prevent him from doing this in the future,” Brennan said. “If my clearances and my reputation -- as I’m being pulled through the mud now -- if that’s the price we’re going to pay to prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me it’s a small price to pay.
“I am going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future, and if it means going to court, I will, I will do that.”
Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance last week. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cited Brennan's "erratic conduct and behavior" as the reasoning behind the revocation and accused him of "lying" and "wild outbursts."
Brennan has been critical of Trump, calling his performance at a joint press conference last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland "nothing short of treasonous." Last week, he accused the president of revoking his clearance as “part of a broader effort … to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics.”
“I will not relent,” he wrote.
Huckabee Sanders said last week that officials continue to look at revoking the clearances of other former officials, including former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
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