A lawsuit filed by former CIA Director John Brennan challenging President Donald Trump's stripping of his security clearance has little chance of success, legal experts told The Hill.
"This is such an absolute discretionary, executive power and it is a power that is beyond the control of the Congress,” said Prof. Robert Turner, who co-founded the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.
"As a policy matter, pulling the security clearances of former [intelligence community] professionals because they criticize him strikes me as being very unwise. But he is the president, and the Constitution vests that policy decision in his office.”
Turner's view was shared by several other experts.
"The chances of John Brennan prevailing on the merits of a lawsuit against the president regarding the revocation of his security clearance are vanishingly small," Jamil N. Jaffer, founder of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, told The Hill.
However, national security lawyer Mark Zaid said Brennan could have a good legal case if the administration refuses to give him the right to appeal the decision, telling The Hill that "If he sues to force an internal due process, that he has grounds to pursue and where I think he would prevail."
Zaid pointed out that those who have their security clearance revoked normally can appeal the decision under an executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1995, although such a process takes a long time and has only a slim chance of overturning a decision.
Brennan, however, said on NBC’s "Meet the Press" that he had “been contacted by a number of lawyers and they have already given me their thoughts about the basis for a complaint, an injunction to try and prevent him from doing this in the future."
Brennan stressed that "if my clearances and my reputation - as I’m being pulled through the mud now - if that’s the price we’re going to pay to prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me it’s a small price to pay."
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