8 Cases Where Mishandling of Classified Information Went Unpunished
Do we really have "one set of laws"? A review of 17 examples of alleged mishandling of classified information suggests a double standard.
www.breitbart.com
24 Jun 2023 ~~ By JOEL B. POLLAK
The core of the accusation against former President Donald Trump is the allegation that he retained and mishandled classified information and national defense secrets. Special Counsel Jack Smith justified this unprecedented prosecution by citing the need to protect classified information and the rule of law. But do we
really have “one set of laws in this country”? Here is a list of eight past examples of high-profile individuals who were never prosecuted for the same basic or similar allegations.
Hillary Clinton – Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was found to have maintained a private email server during her four-year tenure at the Department of State. The server was
located in a bathroom closet in a loft in Denver, Colorado, and included classified information. Worse yet, Clinton used 13 mobile devices to send and receive emails on the server, and five iPads. Some of the mobile devices were
destroyed with hammers.
Despite Hillary Clinton’s
denials, there were hundreds of emails on her private server that included classified information. As Fox News
noted last year (original links):
Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III laid out the findings of the
Clinton documents review by intelligence agencies that identified “several dozen” additional classified emails – including specific intelligence known as “special access programs” (SAP).
~Snip~
Bill Clinton – In what became known as the “Socks case,” Judicial Watch, a private non-profit organization, sued the government to compel it to provide audio tapes made by the White House when Bill Clinton was president and participating in interviews with a historian. President Clinton allegedly hid the tapes in his sock drawer when he left the White House, the better to claim them as “personal” rather than presidential records.
~Snip~
Joe Biden – President Biden took classified documents from the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the Senate when he left to take up his new post as vice president. Those papers were stored in his archive at the University of Delaware, which sealed public access to his records. More egregiously, he was found to have taken classified documents to his private home in Wilmington, Delaware, where they were stored in his garage, next to his Corvette. His son, Hunter Biden, known to have close contacts with foreign business partners and even Chinese intelligence, stayed at the house during the time the classified documents were kept there, and had
access to the garage, and was even seen
driving the Corvette.
~Snip~
James Comey – Outgoing FBI director, who had just been fired by President Trump, leaked memoranda of his conversations with the president to the press, via a Columbia University professor — who later became his lawyer — who then leaked them to the media. Comey did so, he later admitted, hoping to trigger the appointment of a special counsel to probe allegations of “Russia collusion” — even though he and the FBI knew that the primary source of the claims, the so-called “Steele dossier,” was a fraud. The Department of Justice investigated the leaks but
declined to do anything about it, saying Comey did not intend to leak to the media.
~Snip~
Barack Obama – A president cannot “leak,” by definition, because the president has full authority to classify or declassify information. But the Obama White House leaked sensitive information on a constant basis. In 2012, the
New York Times reported that then-President Barack Obama maintained a “kill list” of suspected foreign terrorists who were to be droned. The report made Obama look tough during a close reelection fight; the information was almost certainly leaked by someone in the White House. Yet despite the concern in some quarters, both about the leak and the substance of it, Obama was never held responsible for it.
~Snip~
Mike Pence – Just as Biden was found to have kept classified documents at his personal resident, so, too, former Vice President Pence was found to have government documents at his home, apparently taken as part of his effort to compose his political memoirs in anticipation of his presidential campaign in 2024. Pence returned the documents after they were discovered. Still, like Biden, Pence had no authority to take the documents, even as vice president. The Department of Justice
declined to prosecute Pence just before it indicted Trump.
~Snip~
Lyndon Johnson – As conservative radio host Mark Levin has noted, the president most associated with the Vietnam War removed sensitive federal records, sealed them for 50 years, and even destroyed some of them. From the
Miller Center at the University of Virginia:
~Snip~
Leon Panetta – Then-CIA Director Panetta allegedly leaked classified information to a filmmaker behind
Zero Dark Thirty, a film about the search for Al Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden that was originally intended for release before the 2012 elections. A draft inspector general’s report suggested that Panetta had revealed the unit involved in the mission, as well as its commander, as screenwriter Mark Boal was present for a CIA event.
~Snip~
The point is not that mishandling of classified information is
never punished: it is often punished harshly when the defendants are low-level leakers or inadvertent offenders. But senior officials often escape punishment, or are lightly punished, especially if they are Democrats.
The way that President Donald Trump is being treated is extraordinary and vastly out of proportion to both the alleged offenses and the history of such investigations.
Commentary:
Maoists Leftists are terrified of the thought that a man who cannot be bought, who they can't find any real dirt on, who they cannot control through blackmail or any other means, could be President again.
The possibility that there could be thousands of examples that have been ignored and left unprosecuted, but this corrupt DOJ, FBI, Department of Archives, and administration will use everything at their disposal to attempt to derail Trump or assassinate his character and reputation. There is a “Deep State” of evil within this country. Trump is an existential threat to all of them.
Sessions was compromised and should have appointed a special counsel to investigate either clearing her and other associates also involved in the mishandling of documents or indicting them. That is how the justice system works, or at least is supposed to work.
Hillary destroyed subpoenaed evidence in a federal investigation and there is no denying that she did it.
This alone would land anyone in prison regardless of whether or not there were any other criminal charges in a case.
Yet, Comey told us on national TV there was "NO INTENT"!!!!!! NO REASONABLE PROSCUTOR WOULD PROSCUTE!!!! IF YOU CAN'T BELIEVE HIM....WHO CAN YOU BELIEVE?????
