(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called it "alarming" that former CIA Director John Brennan -- a man who attacks the president on Twitter and now works as an analyst for MSNBC -- may still have top secret security clearance.
"So I think it's completely crazy, and I think the idea that he could be passing secrets to the media, yeah, that's alarming," Paul told Fox News's Tucker Carlson Thursday night.
"What we're going to do -- we're going to send a letter not only to the president asking whether he (Brennan) still has clearance, which I think the president might be interested in this issue. I'm sending the letter also to (Attorney General Jeff) Sessions and also to (Director of National Intelligence) Dan Coats, who's over all of the intelligence.
"So we are going to press the case, and we are going to find out, does John Brennan still have clearance? And really, should a person who has called the president treasonous have a top-secret clearance?"
Tucker Carlson said he was unable to confirm that Brennan still has security clearance, but “knowledgeable sources” say he does.
"This is alarming," said Paul, who recently called Brennan “the most biased, bigoted, over-the-top, hyperbolic sort of unhinged director of the CIA we've ever had."
"And if John Brennan still has top-secret clearance, can he research Donald Trump?” Paul asked. “Can he research his family, can he type my name into computer search engines, can he look at all of my information? It's alarming. If he has top secret clearance, as unhinged as he is now, calling the president treasonous, saying basically that he is for the death penalty for the president -- yeah, it's alarming. It's absolutely alarming.
Carlson asked Paul, "What would prevent him from speaking to current employees of the CIA or other intelligence agencies and getting secret information from them that could be leaked to the press or used against his political opponents?”
"Well, you know, John Brennan has a history of leaking information already, not only for political reasons, but a few years ago, he leaked that there was an inside informant in Yemen while that person was still on the inside, in Yemen. He put that person's life at risk," Paul said. "They all backpedaled and they had to rescue someone out of Yemen who was at the heart of an Al Qaeda, you know, project trying to discover what al Qaida's plans were in Yemen, but John Brennan leaked their name.
“So he's got a history of having a problem with leaking -- head of the CIA; who in their right mind would want to let him have the power still to search through everybody's records?” Paul asked.
Tucker Carlson noted that it's not just Brennan. Former DNI Director James Clapper, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and other "active participants in the current partisan warfare" may also retain their security clearances.
“Shouldn’t there be some mechanism to prevent people who are engaged in partisan warfare from having top secret clearance?” Carlson asked.
“This is something I've advocated for years, and that's to have oversight of the intelligence community by having judges grant warrants so they would have to go to a judge to have permission to look at a database,” Paul responded.
“I don't want them researching Donald Trump's political supporters, their records, their bank records, their phone records. The way to stop it is to have an overall reform, and in fact, I'm going to talk with the president on Monday. And we're going to ask the president will you institute a rule -- a new rule at the FBI that says they cannot search these foreign databases for Americans' material without asking a judge for permission?”
Here's the general flavor of Brennan's many recent tweets:
