Former National Security Adviser John Bolton is facing some serious, well-deserved scrutiny following the recent leaks of material from his forthcoming book.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is now calling for President Donald Trump to revoke Bolton’s security clearance as a result, the Washington Examiner reports.
“No one, especially not John Bolton, should be able to use their security clearance for profit!” Paul wrote on Twitter Saturday morning. “I say revoke his clearance now @realDonaldTrump.”
Damning double standard
Paul clipped to his tweet a RealClearPolitics article titled, “Bolton’s Security Clearance in Jeopardy in Wake of Book Leaks.” The article explains why Bolton’s security clearance is rightly in danger, and it uses Bolton’s own words to make the case.
In doing so, the article refers back to the summer of 2018, not long after Bolton became Trump’s National Security adviser, when he defended the president’s decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan. Why did he take such a stance? Because Bolton deemed Brennan to have been “politicizing intelligence” which, according to Bolton, was a “very dangerous thing to do.”
That begs the question of exactly why, in Bolton’s mind, the standard for judging such conduct apparently changed between the summer of 2018 and the present moment, because Bolton now seems to be doing the very same thing of which he damningly accused Brennan.
Bolton book leaks
Seemingly out of nowhere, during the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, the New York Times published two separate articles that contained leaks from Bolton’s work, which currently is still a manuscript that requires additional re-working, because a standard White House review found that it contained “significant amounts of classified information,” including some that was “top secret.”
With the first leak, the Times tried to settle the issue of whether or not President Trump conditioned the release of aid to Ukraine to the launch of an investigation into the Bidens by citing a portion of the manuscript in which Bolton claims that Trump did just that.
Then, with the second leak, the Times reported that Bolton says in the manuscript that Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine actually went back months prior to the controversial July 25th phone call to a meeting in which Bolton was asked to arrange a meeting between the Ukranian president and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Of course, this leak just happened to be published on the same day that the Senate was set to vote on whether or not to hear witness testimony at the impeachment trial.
Justifiable revocation
Given Bolton’s apparent willingness to give the Democrats the dirt they desired on Trump, Paul had a legitimate question to ask: “Why didn’t John Bolton testify to the U.S. House?”
He answered his own query on Twitter earlier in the week. “Apparently his book wasn’t quite finished yet for presales!” he quipped.
Sen. Paul has raised a very valid point. If Bolton’s manuscript doesn’t qualify as an act of “politicizing intelligence” then it would seem that nothing does. As such, President Trump would be fully justified in making a decision to revoke his security clearance.
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