By Blake Brittain
(Reuters) -A lawyer who represented a government whistleblower in a case that led to U.S. President Donald Trump’s impeachment during his first term sued the Trump administration on Monday for revoking his U.S. security clearance, calling it “unconstitutional retaliation.”
Lawyer Mark Zaid said in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., that the administration’s March decision to pull his clearance, which allows access to certain classified U.S. government information, was retribution for representing former U.S. Department of Homeland Security intelligence chief Brian Murphy.
Murphy filed a whistleblower complaint in 2019 over Trump’s alleged pressuring of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate then-U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s activities in Ukraine. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump later that year for allegedly misusing his power against Biden, his political rival, in pressuring Ukraine. Trump was later acquitted of the impeachment charges by the Senate.
Zaid’s lawsuit called the Trump administration’s decision to rescind his security clearance a “dangerous, unconstitutional retaliation by the President of the United States against his perceived political enemies” that “eschews any semblance of due process.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump called Zaid a “sleazeball” at a Louisiana rally in 2019 and told reporters that he was a “disgrace” who “should be sued,” according to the lawsuit.
Trump rescinded Zaid’s security clearance along with the security clearances of former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other political foes.
The lawsuit called the revocation “a bald-faced attack on a sacred constitutional guarantee: the right to petition the court or federal agencies on behalf of clients.”
Zaid asked the court to declare the revocation unconstitutional and reinstate his clearance.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Leigh Jones and Leslie Adler)
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