I just want to add a couple of points to Ian’s excellent post from Monday on former defense secretary Leon Panetta’s call for Americans — including “the candidates — to “move on” from his pal Hillary Clinton’s email debacle and instead focus on the “real issues.”
As Ian observes, a presidential candidate’s compromising of national security is a “real issue.” That aside, Panetta’s argument is factually false. He says that after a thorough FBI investigation, the Justice Department “found no basis for any kind of action.” To the contrary, while he recommended against the filing of criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton (a recommendation I continue to believe was both poorly reasoned and inappropriate), Comey conceded that Clinton’s reckless compromise of national-defense information warrants sanctions:
To be clear, this [recommendation against a felony indictment] is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.
Security and administrative sanctions in this context mean the removal of the offending official’s security clearance (cutting off access to classified information) and potentially being fired. Short of being fired, it would mean a lengthy suspension, reduction in grade, and removal of various responsibilities. Still, since indictment would be the outcome for the vast run of government officials who do not get the benefit of the Obama administration’s different standard of justice for Clinton (including the military officers who have been prosecuted under the statute the Obama Justice Department declined to apply to Obama’s secretary of state), it would seem that termination of employment should result from an offense as grave as Clinton’s.
Contrary to Panetta’s claim, these forms of discipline are significant kinds of action, and the FBI found abundant basis for them.
Essentially, the FBI director has strongly suggested that, if normal government protocols were followed, the Democratic nominee for president would be stripped of both access to classified information and the duties of a high-ranking government official that require such access.
Moreover, Comey took pains to observe that, under Secretary Clinton, “culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.” In light of the vital importance of classified information and its protection to the work of the State Department, this is a scathing rebuke. It powerfully implies that an official who has demonstrated unfitness for the State Department’s core duties is obviously unfit for the duties of the presidency, which involve even greater responsibility to guard the nation’s defense secrets.
That is a “real issue” – perhaps, the most real issue.
Panetta’s Call to ‘Move On’ From Hillary Emails to ‘Real Issues’