(2018-08-16) — Former CIA Director John Brennan said President Donald Trump yanked his security clearance to silence his criticism of Trump. Brennan’s influence and voice has been eliminated, he said in an op-ed in today’s New York Times and on MSNBC.

Trump pulled the Obama administration official’s clearances because the president believes Brennan deceptively instigated what became the Mueller investigation, and has kept up a relentless attack against the president, which The White House said has national security implications.

In his Times column, Brennan calls Trump’s claim that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, “hogwash.”

“Like a dictator, Trump shut me down and squelched my voice,” Brennan wrote in the globally-distributed news source. “No one can hear me now. Free speech is dead, and Trump will run amok.”

“I don’t know why I go on,” the former CIA chief added, “since no one reads The New York Times or watches MSNBC. Hello…is this thing on?”