Opinion| Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky made an appearance on CNN on Tuesday to bash the intelligence community for the way they recently defied an order directly made by President Donald Trump to revoke disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance.
Take a look:
"People talk about the deep state, now the deep state's actually protecting their own," says Sen. @RandPaul on ex-CIA Dir. John Brennan keeping his security clearance.
"I was sitting in the White House when President Trump said I want his security clearance taken." pic.twitter.com/YcKRG26L1c
— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) June 4, 2019
Host Brianna Keilar started off, “I want to ask you, because you’ve been really a critic of John Brennan, who has been a critic of President Trump. You’ve not been a big fan of him. You’ve said that. He’s the former CIA director under President Obama. What do you think about this recent New York Times story that Brennan still has his security clearance? This was such a big, I guess, promise of the president’s, demand of the president. He said he was going to pull it, and he still has it.”
Senator Rand Paul answered, “Well, this is what worries me. People talk about the Deep State. Now the Deep State is actually protecting their own and not listening to the president’s orders. I was sitting in the White House when President Trump said, ‘I want his security clearance taken,’ and I saw the order given. I saw the chief of staff was there, not the current chief of staff, the previous chief of staff.”
Senator Paul continued, “And if they’re working against the odds of the president, that really does disrupt our country, does disrupt a representative democracy where the president makes a decision, and if someone is countermanding that, I think we need to get to the bottom of that. And I hope President Trump will say, ‘who is countermanding my orders. I said get rid of his clearance.’ And I do think Brennan has been a partisan. And I think Brennan also abused his office in developing the Trump investigation. I think it was done under false pretenses and done for political reasons.”
