President Donald Trump issued a memo late Friday rescinding security clearances and access to classified information for a slew of erstwhile opponents including former Vice President Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, former President Joe Biden and “any other member of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s family.”
Trump had said 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 U.S. 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 catalog 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 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.
The revocation is largely a symbolic action, but it could prevent those named from getting into federal buildings or retrieving classified materials.
In a social media post Saturday morning, Kinzinger said the action “means literally nothing and is funny.”
“What else you got, guys?” he said in an accompanying video.
“I also direct all executive department and agency heads to revoke unescorted access to secure United States government facilities from these individuals,” Trump’s memo stated. “This action includes, but is not limited to, receipt of classified briefings, such as the President’s Daily Brief, and access to classified information held by any member of the intelligence community by virtue of the named individuals’ previous tenure in the Congress.”
Since returning to office, Trump has used memos like the one he put out Friday to thwack at people who have tried to hold him accountable or who have otherwise crossed him. The memos have been wide-ranging in scope. This past week, he put out one that pulled security protections for Biden’s adult children, Ashley and Hunter.
Last month, Trump nixed security clearances for Antony Blinken, the former secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser (both of whom were named again in Friday’s memo).
Trump has also stripped the security detail of his own former aides. Within hours of taking office, he targeted John Bolton, his former national security adviser turned enemy. Trump later did the same to Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, and a former aide, Brian Hook.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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