- Apr 1, 2011
- 170,040
- 47,221
- 2,180
whataboutism, and it's entirely irrelevant.That was in 2016.
Let us now compare to more information since then:
August 31, 2022
In the Trump case, federal authorities have identified more than 322 individual documents containing classified information that were kept at Mar-a-Lago: 184 "unique documents" containing classified information were retrieved early this year, another 38 such documents were retrieved in June, and then more than 100 more documents marked "classified" were found during the FBI raid on August 8, according to Justice Department filings in court.
In Clinton's case, the most sensitive "top secret" information on her servers was deemed by authorities to be "relevant to" and "associated with" a tightly-guarded "Special Access Program" -- and the inspector general said that "investigators found evidence of a conscious effort to avoid sending classified information, by writing around the most sensitive material."
Comparing classified info
Some of Trump's allies claim that the way Clinton allegedly mishandled sensitive information was -- as one pundit put it -- "a lot more serious" than the way Trump allegedly did.
Just on the surface, the number of items containing classified information is different. In the Clinton case, federal authorities identified "approximately 193 individual emails" that, when sent, contained some level of classified information, according to a 2018 report from the Justice Department's inspector general.
"It's not unusual for folks with clearances to sometimes discuss classified matters in unsecure settings," said Tony Mattivi, a former federal prosecutor who coordinated the Justice Department's counterintelligence and counterterrorism cases in Kansas. "You can't always be in a [secure room] when you need to talk to some people or do certain things, so the way you do that is talk around the classified part. ... [But] that's very different than possessing classified material."
In contrast, federal authorities have recovered from Mar-a-Lago more than 100 "unique documents" marked "secret" and dozens of other documents marked "top secret," including "Special Access Program materials," according to the Justice Department and National Archives. Some of those documents marked "classified" were found inside Trump's desk in his office, the Justice Department said.
Accordingly, there "is a meaningful distinction" between Trump's alleged handling of classified documents and what the Justice Department's inspector general says transpired in the Clinton case, according to Mattivi, a Republican who recently lost a primary race to become attorney general of Kansas.
Where's the evidence -- literally?
In accusing the FBI of treating Trump and Clinton differently, Trump's allies have publicly noted that -- even though Clinton potentially compromised classified information -- "we didn't raid her home," as Trump's former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, recently put it.
But in his report on the Clinton matter, the Justice Department's inspector general made clear that federal investigators in that case were able to obtain the materials at issue -- Clinton's private email servers and the emails themselves -- without raiding her home.
"Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement after the raid on Trump's estate.
As described in the inspector general's report on the Clinton matter, "the FBI obtained more than 30 devices" from Clinton and her aides, and "received consent to search Clinton-related communications on most of these devices." Among those 30 devices were two of Clinton's three private email servers, after the third server had been "discarded" years earlier "and, thus, the FBI was never able to access it for review," the inspector general's report said.
In Trump's case, the evidence at the center of the ongoing investigation was still being held at Mar-a-Lago, even after a federal grand jury subpoena three months earlier instructed that "any and all documents" marked "classified" be turned over.
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So prosecutors decided "there was no basis" to charge Clinton or her aides, the inspector general said.
That decision "was consistent with the Department's historical approach in prior cases under different leadership," the inspector general said, noting his office "found no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations."
Nevertheless, in his controversial July 2016 press conference announcing the FBI's findings, Comey said that -- despite a lack of sufficient evidence to bring charges -- Clinton and her aides were still "extremely careless" in handing "very sensitive, highly classified information," noting that "none" of the emails they sent "should have been on any kind of unclassified system."
[Comey has apologized for his harsh words, since then in another article ]
Records 'torn up' by Trump
According to the redacted affidavit released in Trump's case, the FBI is also now investigating whether Trump or his aides may have violated a federal law that criminalizes the "willful" concealment, removal or mutilation of federal records.
In 2016, federal prosecutors contemplated charging Clinton or her aides for violating the same law -- Section 2071 of U.S. Code 18 -- after more than 30,000 emails, which her legal team erroneously deemed personal in nature, were deleted from a server.
Witnesses in the Clinton case told investigators they "expected that any emails sent to a state.gov address would be preserved" -- and many of those emails were acquired from other devices -- so "there was no evidence that Clinton or anyone else" intended to conceal, remove or destroy the emails from government systems, the inspector general said.
In addition, federal prosecutors concluded that, unlike the electronic communications underpinning Clinton's case, "every prosecution under Section 2071 has involved" the "physical removal" or destruction of a document, the inspector general said.
Federal authorities now suggest Trump's actions might fit that mold.
In January, after a months-long effort to retrieve government records from Trump, the National Archives publicly released a statement saying "some of the Trump presidential records" it received from Mar-a-Lago "included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump." The National Archives then referred the matter to the Justice Department, flagging that it could constitute a violation of Section 2071, the Justice Department said in its Tuesday filing.
(full article online)
No, the FBI's Trump investigation is not just like the Hillary Clinton email probe. Here's why
Donald Trump says the FBI is treating him differently than it treated Hillary Clinton during her email controversy -- but documents suggest there are key differences.abcnews.go.com
