GOP senators say Trump is wrong to end security for Iran targets

Tony Czuczka, Bloomberg News on Jan 26, 2025

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Two Republican senators urged President Donald Trump to reverse a decision to end government security details for his former aides who are at risk of revenge from Iran for the U.S. killing of an Iranian senior commander in 2020.

Trump last week appeared to shrug off the decision to cut off the security details for John Bolton, one of Trump’s first-term national security advisers; Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s CIA director and secretary of State in the first term; and for Anthony Fauci, who became a target of Americans who opposed his shaping of the coronavirus pandemic.

“They can hire their own security,” Trump said last week. “I think that certainly I would not take responsibility.”

“I would encourage the president to revisit the decision for those people who are being targeted by Iran,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton said on Fox News Sunday.

The threat to anyone involved in the 2020 U.S. drone strike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani “is persistent, it’s real,” he said. “Iran is committed to vengeance against all of these people.”

“It’s better to be safe than sorry,” Cotton said.

Senator Lindsey Graham said “it seems to me that the threat levels justify the continuation of the program.”

“So I think what you’ll see is the Senate particularly get a briefing about this, and engage the White House to see if we can get some relief,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Bolton and Fauci criticized Trump after he left the White House in 2021, with Bolton calling his former boss unfit for the presidency in a memoir.