(WASHINGTON) — Multiple Trump administration officials who allegedly held classified discussions on an open messaging platform have in the past condemned the mishandling of classified records by others, including former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
National security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have called for “consequences” for individuals who improperly shared classified materials, regardless of their intention. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lambasted Biden for “flippantly” mishandling classified documents and suggested that if he had behaved similarly, he would have expected to be “court-martialed.”
The condemnatory language these senior administration officials have used about prior breaches of protocol in handling sensitive materials adds a layer of irony to what experts are calling an unconscionable misuse of classified information.
John Cohen, a former national security official in both Republican and Democratic administrations, said, “from a security perspective, there is no scenario that justifies this type of information being discussed over a non-government controlled communication platform.”
“Communicating sensitive, operational information in this manner increases the likelihood of inappropriate disclosure which places military personnel at risk,” said Cohen, who is also an ABC News contributor. “There will also be questions about whether doing so violated statutes governing the safeguarding and retention of government information.”
More recently, many of these senior administration officials had much to say about the yearlong investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials. The investigation did not result in any charges.
In January 2023, Hegseth, than a “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host, appeared on Fox News and called Biden’s actions “nefarious, sloppy and dumb.”
“If the top man in the job was handling classified documents this flippantly for that long, why was that the case? Was it really that he didn’t know? When you take something out of the SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] if you’re a senator, you know exactly what you’re doing. You had to sneak it out,” he said. The report included photos of boxes, including one damaged one that contained classified materials, including documents about Afghanistan that was found in the garage of Biden’s home in Delaware “near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.”
In January 2023, Rubio, also appeared on Fox News, where he said, “Any time documents have been removed from their proper setting — it’s a problem, I don’t care who did it.”
During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton drew controversy by using a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. The way many officials reacted has come back to haunt them.
In 2016, Hegseth told Fox News, “If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now… because the assumption is in the intelligence community, if you are using unclassified means, there is likelihood that foreign governments are targeting those accounts.”
Reacting to a Politico article on Clinton, Waltz, who apparently added Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, to the Signal chat, criticized the Department of Justice for its handling of the situation.
“Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing,” Waltz said.
In January 2016, Rubio also appeared on Fox News, demanding that Clinton to be held accountable.
“Nobody is above the law … people are going to be accountable if they broke the laws of this country,” he said.
In August 2022 Stephen Miller, now Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy who was also in the Signal chat group, also posted his thoughts on X reacting to the Clinton email scandal.
“One point that doesn’t get made enough about Hillary’s unsecure server illegally used to conduct state business (obviously created to hide the Clintons’ corrupt pay-for-play): foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other sides of the globe,” he said.
Only two weeks ago, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced a crackdown on leaks within the intelligence community.
“Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such,” she said in a press release.
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