I figure that must be the case, though sometimes I don’t think he plans that far ahead. Elsewhere I’ve read the suggestion that it’s a warning/chilling effect to those with clearances, but who haven’t yet crossed him in public.
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Could be both, I suppose. And you’re right that he probably doesn’t plan that far ahead, but I’m betting his advisors do.
The lawfare article on this contains a clarification I found really helpful, about why threatening to take away a former official’s security clearance isn’t quite the bullshit threat it sounds like.
There is a critical distinction that often is misunderstood—even by individuals who have worked in the cleared community for decades—between “access” and “eligibility for access” to classified information.
When, for example, Comey was fired, his “access” was immediately cut off. He was “debriefed” from any compartmentalized programs to which he had been accessed, his credentials were taken away and he probably signed several “briefing acknowledgment” forms confirming that he had been debriefed. Comey’s “eligibility,” however, was not affected by his termination. What the White House threatened to do on Monday was to revoke Comey’s eligibility.
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What I’m getting at is you (I’m Canadian so I can’t make much difference in your Republic) should spend less time parsing his incoherent proclaimations (e.g. revoking a security clearance that no longer exists) and more time organizing to push back on the real policies that you’ve already mentioned.
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True, but does anybody in the world spend all their time doing what they should be doing, and none of it doing what they shouldn’t be doing?
I’m not going anywhere I’ll get called a Libety.
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Seems like a cynically false dichotomy.
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