Donald Trump: Maybe James Clapper Turned on John Brennan to Keep Security Clearance

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper(L) and CIA Director John Brennan chat befo
MOLLY RILEY/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump mused on Tuesday that perhaps former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper suddenly criticized former Director of the CIA John Brennan to keep his security clearance.

“Even James Clapper has admonished John Brennan for having gone totally off the rails,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Maybe Clapper is being nice to me so he doesn’t lose his Security Clearance for lying to Congress!”

On Sunday, Clapper suggested that Brennan’s rhetoric criticizing the president as “treasonous” was problematic.

“John is sort of like a freight train and he’s gonna say what’s on his mind,” Clapper told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview.

Brennan was hired by MSNBC and Clapper works for CNN.

“John and his rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself,” Clapper added on CNN.

Trump has previously referred to Clapper as a “lying machine who now works for Fake News CNN.”

Clapper famously lied to Congress in 2013, after he testified that the NSA was “not wittingly” collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans.

Clapper has tried to explain away the “lie” insisting that he did not tell a lie, but “made a mistake” in his testimony during an interview on The View.

In 2013, Clapper complained that the question from Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden was a “when are you going to stop beating your wife kind of question” and said he provided the “least untruthful answer” possible.

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