GOP lawmakers say they are in favor of President-elect Donald Trump's move to strip the security clearances of the 51 former intelligence officials who labeled Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation.
"A lot of those people still have security clearances," Vice President-elect J.D. Vance said two days after Trump won the presidential election.
We will "strip every single one of those people of those security clearances, fire every single person. You cannot lie, take your position of public trust, and lie to the American people for political purposes."
"It's disgraceful. And people have to suffer consequences for it."
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told The Washington Times that "we should scrub all the legacy clearances to see whether the people need to have them and for what purpose, and unless they're working for a company in a role that makes sense, they should be taken away." Issa asserted, "Most on that list [of 51], I would include in that scrubbing."
Added Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., "It should be an option."
The cosigners include former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden; former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper; former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta; former CIA Director John O. Brennan; and former U.S. National Intelligence Council Deputy Director Thomas Fingar, among others.