President Donald Trump removed the security clearances held by some of his past political opponents, including the three Democrats he ran presidential campaigns against.
Trump moved Friday to revoke security clearances from former President Joe Biden, members of the Biden family, former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other partisan political opponents.
“I hereby direct every executive department and agency head to take all additional action as necessary and consistent with existing law to revoke any active security clearances held by the aforementioned individuals and to immediately rescind their access to classified information,” Trump said in a memo.
“I also direct all executive department and agency heads to revoke unescorted access to secure United States Government facilities from these individuals.”
Former GOP Representatives Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D.), Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D.), and former U.S. Army Colonel Alexander Vindman are also listed on Trump’s directive.
Although Cheney and Kinzger were once Republican lawmakers, both endorsed Harris’s 2024 campaign as they have evolved into partisan opponents of Trump. Rounding out the cast of characters are left-wing attorneys Norman Eisen and Mark Zaid, former Trump national security official Fiona Hill, and former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. Many those figures participated in political and legal scandals against Trump during his first term and the four years between his two terms.
Those scandals include Trump’s first impeachment, the House January 6th Committee’s investigation into the Capitol riot, and the criminal and civil cases against Trump in New York. Bragg prosecuted Trump on 34 felonies in Manhattan for falsifying business records in connection to reimbursements he paid attorney and fixer Michael Cohen for his hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. After his 2024 election victory, Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge in the hush-money case, meaning no punishment for the felony charges.
Blinken and Sullivan were both top national security officials under President Biden, and oversaw a foreign policy defined by Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Israel’s multi-front regional war following Hamas’s mass civilian slaughter on October 7, 2023. Right before Hamas’s attack, Sullivan infamously asserted that the Middle East was the most peaceful it had been in two decades.
Blinken was also the architect of the discredited letter from 51 former intelligence officials ahead of the 2020 presidential election that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story resembled Russian disinformation.
Trump defeated Clinton in the 2016 presidential election in a shocking upset that remains an enormously consequential event for U.S. and global politics. Four years later, Trump lost to Biden amid the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter riots that characterized a tumultuous summer to close out Trump’s often chaotic term. Trump remains in denial about the 2020 election results and helped provoke the January 6th, 2021 Capitol riot by a group of his supporters who thought the election was stolen.
In mounting a historic political comeback, Trump ran again in the 2024 presidential election, decisively defeating Harris after she replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee over the summer after Biden’s mental decline became readily apparent in the first presidential debate. Along the way, Trump survived two assassination attempts and easily won a GOP primary against a large field of competitors.