Ex-national security adviser H.R. McMaster talked President Trump out of blocking former President Barack Obama’s access to intelligence briefings last year, according to a report Monday.
Around March 2017, when Trump accused his predecessor, without evidence, of wiretapping Trump Tower, some of his associates in the White House were pushing their boss to pull the security clearances of Obama administration officials they saw as political rivals.
Some even suggested that Obama should lose access to intelligence briefings, an extreme move as all living ex-presidents can get them. But, the New Yorker reports, Trump was told of the importance of allowing former presidents to keep access to intelligence as they sometimes meet with foreign leaders, and with McMaster’s insistence, decided not to make a move against Obama.
Trump denied the report Tuesday morning, tweeting that he “[n]ever discussed or thought of” pulling Obama’s access to intelligence briefings.
Fake News, of which there is soooo much (this time the very tired New Yorker) falsely reported that I was going to take the extraordinary step of denying Intelligence Briefings to President Obama. Never discussed or thought of!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2018
The report is timely as last week Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA John Brennan and his administration has said it is reviewing the clearances possessed by other ex-officials who have criticized the president.
McMaster left his White House post earlier this year, replaced by former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton.
The New Yorker report says that while McMaster was national security adviser he signed a memo extending the clearances of former National Security Council members regardless of their political affiliation.
He has a book slated to come out in 2020 — “Battlegrounds” — that will in part chronicle his time in the White House.
