Susan Gordon, a former principal deputy director of national intelligence who served in the Trump administration, is calling for her former boss’s access to protected information to be suspended after he departs from office.
Dubbing President Trump a “potential national security risk,” Gordon made the unconventional recommendation to President-elect Joe Biden, who will reserve the right to restrict his predecessor’s access upon taking the oath of office, in a Friday op-ed in the Washington Post.
“My recommendation, as a 30-plus year veteran of the intelligence community, is not to provide [Trump] any briefings after Jan. 20,” she wrote. “His post-White House ‘security profile,’ as the professionals like to call it, is daunting.”
Gordon, who left the U.S. intelligence community in August 2019, argued that Trump poses a unique security risk due to his pledge to continue to remain engaged on the national political landscape.
“Any former president is by definition a target and presents some risks. But a former president Trump, even before the events of last week, might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent,” she said. “He leaves, unlike his predecessors who embraced the muted responsibilities of being a ‘former,’ with a stated agenda to stay engaged in politics and policy. No departing president in the modern era has hinted at or planned on becoming a political actor immediately after leaving office.”
Furthermore, Gordon argued, Trump’s business dealings render him especially susceptible to exploitation by foreign actors.
“In addition, Trump has significant business entanglements that involve foreign entities. Many of these current business relationships are in parts of the world that are vulnerable to intelligence services from other nation-states. And it is not clear that he understands the tradecraft to which he has been exposed, the reasons the knowledge he has acquired must be protected from disclosure, or the intentions and capabilities of adversaries and competitors who will use any means to advance their interests at the expense of ours,” she said.
Gordon’s proposal comes as the president-elect grapples with his own burgeoning controversy in which Republicans have raised concerns about Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, being under federal investigation for his business dealings in China and Ukraine, although the elder Biden is not implicated.
Biden vowed not to show favoritism to his son while he was vetting candidates to lead the Department of Justice. “The attorney general of the United States of America is not the president’s lawyer,” he said. “I will appoint someone who I expect to enforce the law as the law is written, not guided by me.”
Biden, whose inauguration is Wednesday, has since picked Judge Merrick Garland to be his nominee for attorney general.
