President Trump issued a memo late Friday night rescinding security clearances and access to classified information for a slew of erstwhile opponents including Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Joseph R Biden Jr. and “any other member of Joseph RBiden Jr’s family.”
Trump had said back in February that he planned to remove his predecessor’s access to classified intelligence briefings. It was payback — Biden had done the same to him after he left office in the days after the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
A variety of figures who have tangled with Trump at one point or another were named in Friday’s memo. Some had already been mentioned by Trump officials as people who would soon have their security clearances revoked, so their inclusion in Friday’s memo did not come as a shock. Harris and Clinton, however, were seemingly new to the list. Taken together, the catalogue of names read like an enemies list.
There were New York’s top two law enforcement officials, Letitia James (the New York attorney general) and Alvin L Bragg (Manhattan’s district attorney), both of whom took on Trump.
There were prominent characters from the first impeachment brought against Trump in 2019, when he was shown to have tried to strong-arm Ukraine into helping him dig up dirt on Biden. Names included in Friday’s memo: Fiona Hill, a top foreign policy expert who testified during the impeachment hearings; Alexander Vindman, a lieutenant colonel who also testified; and Norman Eisen, a lawyer who oversaw that impeachment.
And there were the only two Republicans who served on the House Select Committee investigating the Jan 6 attack, Liz Cheney and Adam
Kinzinger. (Agencies)
