Security clearance suspended for prominent Donald Trump surrogate

| 6:16 pm EDT August 16, 2017
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On Monday evening, as he was gearing up to give a speech defending white supremacists the next day, Donald Trump retweeted a racist Twitter post from one of his more prominent online surrogates: Jack Posobiec. This was the same Posobiec who helped spread the phony “pizzagate” conspiracy which led to violence at a pizzeria. Posobiec is also a Navy veteran and Navy intel reservist – but now it turns out his security clearance has been suspended.

In an article that was otherwise largely focused on the Trump retweet, NBC News included this tidbit of information: “John Michael Posobiec III’s security clearance is currently suspended, according to a U.S. official, who did not disclose the reason for the suspension” (link). NBC also added that “From March 2014 through March 2017 he was assigned to a Reserve Intelligence Unit at Office of Naval Intelligence’s Naval Maritime Intelligence Center in Washington.” March 2017 was also a notable date in the pizzagate timeline.

Posobiec and other online Trump surrogates promoted the absurd false claim that the Democratic Party was running a human trafficking ring out a pizzeria in Washington DC, which motivated Edgar Maddison Welch to shoot up the place in December. Welch entered into a plea agreement in March, bringing the case to a close. That’s the same timeframe in which Posobiec’s time in Navy intelligence ended, and now we’ve learned that his security clearance has been suspended. This raises the question of whether the role he played in the pizzagate debacle may have led to the loss of his security clearance.

Meanwhile, Jack Posobiec is responding to the NBC News article in a fashion all too similar to that of Donald Trump. Rather than offering an explanation for why he lost his security clearance, he’s simply tweeting “Outrageous that fake news media’s first reaction was to attack my service record with the US military. Shameful!”