(WASHINGTON) — After having his security clearance revoked by President Donald Trump, high-profile whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to have his security clearance restored — saying that it was revoked for “improper political retribution.”
“The Trump Administration is seeking to neutralize someone viewed as an adversarial threat,” the complaint, filed in Washington, D.C., stated.
In March, Trump issued a presidential memorandum that revoked the security clearances of more than a dozen individuals, including Zaid, former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton — a move the complaint says is “a dangerous, unconstitutional retaliation by the President of the United States against his perceived political enemies.”
In his memorandum, Trump wrote he had “determined that it is no longer in the national interest” for Zaid and others to have access to classified information.
Zaid, according to his complaint, has represented “whistleblowers in every administration” dating back to Bill Clinton, doing so “without regard to party politics” — and that the revocation of his clearance is now “undermining” his ability to fully represent his clients.
According to the complaint, Zaid has had access to classified information in some capacity for about three decades, since approximately 1995. His first “fully approved” clearance, according to the complaint, came in 2002 as part of ongoing litigation. He was granted a “secret” clearance, which he maintained for years, until he was increased during the first Trump administration to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS-SCI) as part of a case he was handling for a DHS whistleblower. He was last “read out” of his security in 2024, though it was not fully processed until 2025.
“In summary, Mr. Zaid has been a practicing attorney for over thirty years and for most of his professional career he has maintained authorized access to classified information,” the complaint states. “Indeed, far from being a security risk, he has established himself and has been recognized by legal and non-legal entities as a leader in the legal community and in the national security field specifically.”
Zaid’s complaint says he has already suffered real-world harms as a result of Trump’s memo after it was “blindly implemented” by a number of agencies. In one instance, the complaint says Zaid was notified in an email from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s inspector general’s office that he was “denied access to a client’s classified complaint” because he no longer had a security clearance.
“In sum, Mr. Zaid currently represents multiple clients for whom he now cannot access relevant classified information as part of his effective and zealous representation,” the complaint states.
Attorneys for Zaid, including Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen, say in the complaint that they suspect Zaid “came onto President Trump’s radar” when he represented a whistleblower in 2019 who filed a complaint about Trump’s 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, leading to his first impeachment.
The complaint says the revocation is a violation of First and Fifth amendments, and asks a judge to declare the presidential memorandum unconstitutional, block any further implementation, rescind the revocation, and “Require the Defendants to conduct a name-clearing hearing.”
“No American should lose their livelihood, or be blocked as a lawyer from representing clients, because a president carries a grudge toward them or who they represent,” Zaid said in a statement. “This isn’t just about me. It’s about using security clearances as political weapons.”
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