Because it could be witness retaliation to threaten someone who has provided truthful testimony to the government.
Appearing as an analyst on Brian Williams’s MSNBC show, Former Federal Prosecutor Ellie Honig explained that retaliating against a witness be a federal offense.
“The revocation of Brennan’s security clearance is a new angle here, and I think the president is getting into even more dangerous ground,” he said. “I think we’re all familiar with the concept of obstruction of justice. But what I don’t know that everybody understands is that it’s also a crime to retaliate against someone who is a witness.”
Brennan is probably not a witness, Honig said, but someone like former FBI director James Comey certainly is a “crucial witness.”
“Its is a federal crime, §1513 if anyone wants to look it up, to retaliate against someone for providing truthful information to law enforcement,” he said. “So he’s getting closer and closer to really dangerous ground here. ”
The relevant section of the law is this.
18 U.S. Code § 1513 - Retaliating against a witness, victim, or an informant
(e) Whoever knowingly, with the intent to retaliate, takes any action harmful to any
person, including interference with the lawful employment or livelihood of any
person, for providing to a
law enforcement officer any truthful information relating to the commission or possible commission of any Federal offense, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
(f) Whoever conspires to commit any
offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the
offense the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.
As noted Brennan may not be a witness, but it’s likely that Comey and McCabe would likely be witnesses on the obstruction of justice case while Bruce Ohr and Peter Strzok could be witnesses on the underlying intelligence and conspiracy investigation. Technically only Ohr probably still has a clearance, but that’s really not the point — the threat to harm their potential livelihood is the retaliation because even .it would be only minimally effective in some cases, it’s clear that the White House thinks it would effective as punishment for what many of these people have said and most of that has been under oath, or likely to the Special Counsel.
Let’s just recall that Trump already said this to the WSJ.
“I call it the rigged witch hunt, (it) is a sham,” he told the WSJ.“And these people led it! … So I think it’s something that had to be done.”
Once again Trump’s Ready, Fire, Aim strategy seems to have potentially backfired.
“The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of ‘Trump Incorporated’ attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing
the movement of money into their pockets,” Brennan wrote.
Trump has been lying about evidence of his presidential campaign’s collusion with Russia for so long that some journalists are beginning to believe it. But the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, Adam Schiff (D-CA), totally destroyed that false narrative on Sunday.
On this weekend’s edition of CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” host Margaret Brennan tried to get Schiff to agree to the lie that Trump has been telling for over a year now — that there is “no evidence of collusion” between his campaign and Russia.
“Can you agree that there has been no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy that has been presented thus far between the Trump campaign and Russia?” Brennan asked Schiff.
“No, I don’t agree with that at all,” Schiff replied. “I think there’s plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight.”
Schiff added that he doesn’t mean a court has found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a criminal conspiracy.” That burden of proof is up to special counsel Robert Mueller to establish, Schiff said.
However, Brennan would have unique information from the CIA about this which hasn't yet been made public.
If there are going to be Impeachment Hearings or a Senate Trial to remove Brennan's lack of a clearance would block crucial testimony they could receive, and once Trump has left office this could also be extremely relevant to any criminal conspiracy, money laundering and obstruction indictment and cases which may come up.
The same would be true for testimony from Yates, Comey, McCabe and Strzok.
Friday, Aug 17, 2018 · 2:29:18 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Maddow is also on this:
“What if the practical effect of taking away a security clearance from a former official who was involved in the formative stages of the Russian investigation is that you interfere with that former official accessing his or her own notes and files? His or her own materials? From the former agency where those people worked during their time working on the Russia investigation.
According to Brennan, that’s something that you’d need to do and that you might employ your security clearance to do if you’re going to be questioned on these matters as part of ongoing investigations.
Look at the list. Look at almost all the names on the list of people the president wants to do this to. Brennan, CIA director during the Russia attack. Clapper, director of national intelligence during the Russia attack. Comey, director of the FBI during the Russia attack. McCabe, deputy director of the FBI during the Russia attack. Strzok, head of counterintelligence at the FBI during the Russia attack. Susan Rice, national security adviser during the Russia attack. Sally Yates, deputy attorney general during the Russia attack.
Security clearances may or may not be something any of these people are using for their current work. But if they are stripped of their clearances or blocked from ever getting them again, what does that do to their ability to prepare for testimony and to testify if need be? We have good reason, after all, to think that a bunch of these people might have important things to say provided they can speak about classified material in a classified setting.
Maddow’s take on this is slightly different than Ellie Honig’s, her focus is on the ability of these persons to be able to testify where classified information would be involved since many of them, Comey and Sally Yates specifically, have stated under oath that they were unable to answer questions in an open session on whether there was or wasn’t collusion because that remains classified.
That would be obstruction and witness tampering, but it’s still basically the same problem as witness retaliation.