Trump revokes security clearances of former officials who signed Hunter Biden laptop letter with executive action

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday revoking the security clearance of 51 former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter arguing that emails from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden carried “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday revoking the security clearance of 51 former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter arguing that emails from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden carried “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Many of the 51 former officials are long retired and no longer hold active clearances — meaning that the move may have limited practical impact on their careers — but the order nevertheless suggests that Trump intends to act on threats he’s made to penalize national security and intelligence professionals whom he deems to be his enemies. “They should be prosecuted for what they did,” Trump said of the 51 former officials who signed the letter, at a campaign rally in June. The letter was signed by a number of top former officials from both the Obama and Bush administrations, including former director of national intelligence Jim Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan and former acting CIA directors John McLaughlin and Michael Morell. In the four years since the letter was written, its authors have become a key target for Republican lawmakers and Trump’s allies. GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill have made the origins of the letter a key focus point, calling up a number of signatories to testify behind closed doors and issuing several reports on the matter. The letter almost immediately became a flashpoint in the partisan wrangling over the laptop itself, which contained sexually explicit videos of the former president’s son with women, as well as photos of him doing drugs in hotel rooms, many of which have since been published by right-wing media outlets.