The former CIA director John Brennan is threatening legal action against Donald Trump, after he was summarily stripped of his security clearance in an unprecedented display of presidential pique.



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Brennan took to the airways on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press and made clear that he had no intention of being cowered by Trump’s bombshell action to deprive him of access to classified information. The unparalleled move has triggered an equally unparalleled blowback from 13 of the most revered national security figures in the country, who penned a joint letter decrying the move as “ill-considered and unprecedented”.

The man at the center of the billowing dispute has now substantially upped the ante by stating that he is considering legal action. Brennan said he had been contacted by a number of lawyers and was actively weighing his options.

He told NBC that in his opinion the revoking of his security clearance was Trump’s way of trying to scare other existing and former government officials.

I am going to do whatever I can to try and prevent these abuses occurring in the future John Brennan

“It was a clear signal that if you cross him he will use whatever tools he might have at his disposal to punish you,” he said.

Brennan called the move an example of Trump’s “egregious” approach to power. He said: “I am going to do whatever I can to try and prevent these abuses occurring in the future and if that means going to court I will do that.”

While the former CIA director has been busily doubling down on his criticism of Trump, the White House and its supporters in Congress have also been energetically mounting a campaign of character assassination against him.

Richard Burr, the Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, began the outpouring last week when he suggested that any comment by Brennan accusing Trump of possible collusion with Russia that had been based on classified information gathered since he left the CIA would constitute an intelligence breach.

When he was CIA director I was very troubled by … what I thought was his politicization of the intelligence community John Bolton

On Sunday, national security adviser John Bolton echoed the claim when he told ABC’s This Week: “A number of people have commented that [Brennan] couldn’t be in the position he’s in of criticizing President Trump and his so-called collusion with Russia unless he did use classified information.”

Bolton was forced to admit he could point to no specific examples of any such breach. Instead, he further cast aspersions on Brennan by questioning his actions while in office as Barack Obama’s final CIA director.

“When he was CIA director I was very troubled by his conduct, by statements he made in public and by what I thought was his politicization of the intelligence community,” Bolton said, again without offering specifics.

Brennan denied any intelligence breach, saying his criticisms of Trump had been fully based on the reports of a “free and open press”. He also said: “I don’t believe I’m being political at all – I’m not a Republican or a Democrat.”

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The White House appears to be trying to turn the blazing controversy over security clearances away from Trump’s unprecedented action and on to Brennan’s character. To some degree, Brennan has offered Trump a helping hand by seeming to rein back on his most serious charge: that during his joint press conference with the Russian president Vladimir Putin in July, the president acted in a way that was “nothing short of treasonous”.

On Friday, Brennan said he hadn’t intended to say that Trump actually committed treason. He told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that “sometimes my Irish comes out and in my tweets”.

On the back of such remarks, Brennan has come under some criticism from even his allies. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who was one of the 13 senior figures who signed the letter opposing the removal of Brennan’s clearance, told CNN’s State of the Union his “rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself”.

He added: “John is sort of like a freight train, and he’s going to say what’s on his mind.”