Trump Ordered 15 Opponents Stripped of Classified Access, Then Called for Firings and Possible Charges

Fifteen Names, Including the Prosecutors Who Brought Cases Against Him

On March 22, 2025, Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing every executive department and agency to revoke any active clearances held by fifteen named people and immediately rescind their access to classified information.¹ Trump's memorandum recited no misconduct by anyone on the list.¹ One of the fifteen was Mark Zaid, a lawyer for whistleblowers.¹² A federal judge later found, on a preliminary record, that Zaid lost his clearance solely because of the clients he represented, and that the revocation forced those clients to proceed without their chosen counsel.²

That order is the plainest instance of a pattern: Trump used intelligence powers to punish opponents and to turn government disclosures into accusations against people associated with past elections.¹³⁴

Two of the fifteen were prosecutors who had brought cases against him.¹ New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil fraud suit against him in September 2022.¹⁵ Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced his indictment on 34 felony counts in April 2023.¹⁶ The other names included Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger; the order also reached other members of Biden's family.¹

Its stated ground was Trump's determination that their access was no longer in the national interest, and it also ordered their unescorted access to secure federal facilities revoked.¹

Presidential memorandum revoking classified access¹

I have determined that it is no longer in the national interest for the following individuals to access classified information:

Twelve days before the memorandum, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that she had revoked eight named people's clearances at Trump's direction, including James, Bragg and Zaid.⁷ Her office repeated the presidential direction in releases that April and May; the May release also named the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden letter and accused those whose access it revoked of abusing public trust for political purposes.⁸⁹

A Judge Found the Lawyer Lost His Clearance Because of His Clients

District Judge Amir Ali ruled on Zaid's revocation, one of the fifteen, on December 23, 2025.² On the preliminary-injunction record, he found that Zaid's representation of whistleblowers and other clients adverse to the government was the sole reason for the summary revocation.² He found Zaid likely to succeed on First Amendment, procedural due-process and right-to-counsel claims.²

The harm reached past the lawyer: Ali found that the revocation had prevented Zaid from participating in classified parts of a client's interview with a legislative committee.²

Ali granted a preliminary injunction against implementing the memorandum as to Zaid, while preserving the government's ability to revoke access for independent reasons through ordinary agency procedures.²¹⁰ The government appealed, as the ACLU's March 2026 case account records.²¹⁰

In April 2026, Senator Mark Warner reported that Gabbard had referred a whistleblower for criminal prosecution and said the referral appeared retaliatory.¹¹¹² The senior Democrats on Congress's intelligence committees had written that the whistleblower's complaint took more than nine months to reach them and that her office then withheld the underlying report under an executive-privilege claim they called unprecedented; Gabbard denied hiding the complaint and disputed the deadline.¹²¹³ Gabbard said the inspectors general, rather than her office, held the complaint and that the 21-day transmission requirement did not apply because it had not been found both urgent and apparently credible.¹³ Warner and Himes said she still owed the complainant security guidance even if the complaint was not found credible.¹²

Ratcliffe's Own Review Did Not Establish His Accusation

Trump's intelligence chiefs used a different power over secrets, releasing them, to accuse former officials.¹⁴³¹⁵

On July 2, 2025, CIA Director John Ratcliffe declassified an internal review of the 2016 assessment of Russian election interference; his agency's release said he intended to promote objective analysis free of political influence.¹⁴³ On his official account that day, he accused John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey of manipulating intelligence and silencing career professionals to get Trump.³

The review he released did not reach that conclusion.¹⁶ It called the assessment defensible, found much of its tradecraft robust and consistent with intelligence standards, and said its analytic rigor exceeded that of most intelligence assessments.¹⁶ It recorded that the officers drafting the assessment consistently said they had not felt pressured to reach specific conclusions.¹⁶¹⁷ It did not dispute the quality and credibility of the classified CIA report central to the disputed judgment, and found the authors' interpretation most consistent with the raw intelligence.¹⁶ A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee review in 2020 had found no significant analytical tradecraft problems in the assessment's preparation or presentation.¹⁷

The review's criticisms were substantial.¹⁶³ It found a compressed schedule, restrictive compartmentation, excessive agency-head involvement, insufficient testing of alternatives and an unjustifiably high confidence level on the judgment that Putin aspired to help Trump win.¹⁶ The review also found that the authors omitted credibly sourced information suggesting Putin was more ambivalent about which candidate won.¹⁶ It faulted the inclusion of unsubstantiated Steele dossier material and said the rushed pre-transition timetable raised questions about a possible political motive.¹⁶ The assessment included a two-page summary of the dossier as an annex with a disclaimer that the material was not used to reach the analytic conclusions; the review said a reference to that material in the main body nevertheless elevated unsubstantiated claims into supporting evidence.¹⁶

Those findings support criticism of the process.¹⁶³ They do not turn a defensible assessment into proof that its authors conspired to get Trump.¹⁶³

Gabbard went further.¹⁵ On July 18, 2025, in her agency's own release, she called the material she was publishing evidence of a treasonous conspiracy by high-level officials and a years-long attempt to subvert Trump's presidency.¹⁵ She announced that every person involved should be investigated and prosecuted, and that she was providing the documents to the Justice Department to deliver accountability to Trump, his family and the public.¹⁵

In May 2025, Gabbard had removed the acting chair and vice chair of the National Intelligence Council, both career officials, seven days after two House members said publicly that her descriptions of a declassified Council memorandum on Venezuela did not match its findings.^18192021 NBC News reported one unnamed official's claim that the two could not provide unbiased intelligence, and ODNI later alleged that former Council leaders had leaked classified information to reporters; why the two were removed, and whether either worked on the memorandum, has not been established.^20221819

Trump appointed Ratcliffe and Gabbard; no order from him directing Gabbard's disclosure campaign has been established.³¹⁵

In July 2026, Trump Himself Demanded Firings and Possible Charges

A year later, an accusation came from Trump himself.⁴ On July 16, 2026, in a televised address, he announced the immediate declassification of election intelligence.⁴ He said his purpose was to earn confidence by confronting vulnerabilities, accused officials of concealing foreign election threats and described the U.S. election system as broken and exposed.⁴ Then he directed four agencies toward the alleged concealment.⁴

Address to the Nation on Election Reforms, Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents⁴

Today I'm asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the coverup, and to file criminal charges, if appropriate, against these people.

Trump said China had acquired 220 million U.S. voter files.⁴ CBS reported that voter registration data is publicly available, though some personal information remains confidential, and that a report declassified almost four years earlier had already disclosed China's acquisition of multiple states' voter data.²³

He also referred to intelligence about Venezuelan methods of digitally altering vote totals.⁴ His own speech identified that reporting as concerning Venezuela's elections, while using it to argue for action on American voting systems.⁴ CBS reported that the Venezuela material concerned Smartmatic technology, used in the United States only in Los Angeles County, and that the January 2020 vulnerability assessment said large-scale manipulation of vote totals would be difficult and likely detectable through audits.²³

The White House's July 17 defense said Trump had made no claim about past elections and was exposing ongoing vulnerabilities.²⁴ Part of that is sound: foreign cyber capabilities and access to voter information warrant protection even when no outcome has changed.⁴²⁴ But his speech said the American election system had been "hacked or compromised like it was in the past".⁴ And CBS reported that a White House official acknowledged before the speech that the newly released information would not allege votes had been switched or voting machines hacked.²³

The intelligence community had drawn that line five years earlier, in its March 2021 assessment.²⁵ It reported no indication that foreign actors had attempted to alter any technical aspect of the 2020 voting process, and said access to voter information did not establish interference with the election itself.²⁵ It judged with high confidence that China had not deployed interference efforts and had considered but not deployed influence efforts intended to change the presidential outcome.²⁵ Its National Intelligence Officer for Cyber dissented, assessing that China had taken some steps to undermine Trump's reelection.²⁵ The assessment did not measure how foreign influence affected the outcome, and neither the majority judgment nor the dissent establishes that China changed the vote.²⁵

Before Trump accused others of concealing foreign election threats, his attorney general, Pamela Bondi, had ordered the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force disbanded, and Gabbard's office had said it was refocusing functions within the congressionally created Foreign Malign Influence Center and integrating its core functions and expertise into other ODNI offices.²⁶²⁷²² The administration argued the offices duplicated work and threatened civil liberties; Gabbard's office also called the 2016 assessment that Putin aspired to help Trump win manufactured and false.²⁶²² The 2026 annual threat assessment omitted foreign influence on U.S. elections, which the eight available editions from 2017 through 2025 had named, without explaining why.^{282930313233343536}

Lawful Authority Does Not Settle Whether Its Use Abused Public Trust

The strongest legal defense begins with powers the President actually holds.^37383940 In Department of the Navy v. Egan, the Supreme Court placed the discretionary clearance judgment with the Executive and warned against courts reweighing national security decisions.³⁷ Other Supreme Court decisions recognize presidential removal authority over executive officers, and an executive order provides the declassification framework.³⁸³⁹⁴⁰ These powers support granting and withdrawing access, changing executive personnel and releasing secrets.^37383940

One court has tested the defense, on one revocation and a preliminary record.² In Zaid's case, Ali said Egan forecloses review of the merits of clearance determinations but permits review of the legality of the process.² On that record, he found retaliation against Zaid and rejected the government's unsupported alternative explanation that the revocation served protection of classified information.²

Trump v. United States barred inquiry into presidential motive when distinguishing official and unofficial conduct for criminal immunity, but the same opinion described impeachment as Congress's political removal process.⁴¹⁴²⁴³ Hamilton described impeachment offenses as abuses or violations of public trust.⁴²⁴³ In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved an abuse-of-power article against Nixon that included misuse of the FBI and other executive personnel, and rejected two other charges, one on Cambodia concealment and one on taxes and private estates.⁴⁴

The charge is abuse of public trust.⁴²⁴³ Trump used secrecy and intelligence powers, entrusted to him for national security, to withdraw access from people who had opposed him, and a lawyer's clients lost their chosen counsel.¹⁵⁶² His appointees converted qualified intelligence findings into accusations against former officials, and he then demanded firings and possible criminal charges himself.¹⁶³¹⁵⁴ That is the abuse Congress must judge.⁴²⁴³