By David Ljunggren
(Reuters) – Two senior Republican senators on Sunday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to rethink his decision to strip personal security from some former Trump administration officials, one of whom was the target of an alleged Iranian plot.
Trump this week ended protection for his former national security adviser John Bolton, who became a vocal Trump critic, as well as for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others.
The United States charged a member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2022 with plotting to murder Bolton, who served as Trump’s third national security adviser until he was dismissed in 2019.
“I would encourage the president to revisit the decision for those people who are being targeted by Iran,” Tom Cotton, chair of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee, told Fox News Sunday.
Iran promised revenge after Trump ordered a drone strike in 2020 that killed General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of the elite Revolutionary Guards.
“I’ve reviewed the intelligence in the last few days. The threat to anyone involved in President Donald Trump’s strike (on) Soleimani is persistent. It’s real. Iran is committed to vengeance against all of these people,” Cotton said.
Trump told reporters that the government could not protect people forever and said former officials could pay for security out of their own pockets.
Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump backer, told CNN Trump’s move could make it harder to recruit the right people in the future.
“Whether you like John Bolton or not, that’s not the question for me … We need to make sure that if you serve in our government and you take on a foreign power at the request of the administration that we do not leave you hanging,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, editing by Ross Colvin and Marguerita Choy)
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