It appears that turn-about is fair play with high-powered Democrats.
You might not know that President Bill Clinton pardoned former CIA Director John Deutch for the same kind of careless behavior for which Hillary Clinton was exonerated. The connection is coming.
The pardon by Clinton was one of his last measures of goodwill prior to his departure from office. Deutch’s crime? He retained classified documents on his home computer in Maryland. Also, he attempted to destroy some of the materials, however he was caught.
When Deutch’s actions were discovered, an almost immediate reaction occurred by federal investigators to retrieve the hard drive from his computer. Unlike crooked Hillary Clinton, Deutch didn’t have lawyers decide which emails to hand over and which to destroy permanently and irrevocably.
Nor did Deutch’s non-existent team get six months grace period, prior to his investigation to prepare for possible indictment. These were tiny technicalities afforded Hillary Clinton by FBI Director James Comey.
In Deutch’s case the Inspector General stepped in after they perceived the CIA was not acting appropriately in the investigation. The IG opened its own probe, and ccording to National Review,
“The Deutch IG report contains a useful discussion of federal laws that may be violated by handling classified material on a home computer. There’s 18 U.S.C. §793, which makes it a criminal offense ‘through gross negligence’to allow defense information ‘to be removed from its proper place of custody.’An unsecured personal computer is obviously not a “proper place of custody,” as John Deutch discovered. Note that no intentional misconduct is required; just gross negligence.”
Deutch supposedly had no intent to do wrong, as Comey repeatedly emphasized of Hillary. Nevertheless, Deutch was to be indicted on his actions, regardless. That is until Bill Clinton rushed in with his pardon.
Several websites referred to the commonalities of Deutch’s and Hillary’s infractions. During a House Oversight Committee yesterday Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Ma) queried Comey:
“We have a lot of comparisons in other cases and it seems like all the cases where prosecutions have gone forward, the subject of the investigation has demonstrated a clear intent to deliver classified information to a person or persons who were unauthorized to receive that…And even former Director of the CIA John Deutch, who retained classified information on a couple of servers, one in Belmont, Massachusetts, and one in Bethesda, Maryland, and that was after he became a private citizen.”
No evidence was presented that Deutch intended to deliver classified information. Nevertheless, Comey testified,
“He took a huge amount of documents, almost all of the TSSCI level, has in a hard copy at his house, had them on unclassed system connected to the internet, attempted to destroy some of them when he got caught, admitted I knew I wasn’t supposed to be doing this.”
Didn’t Hillary place documents in a burn bag to be destroyed? She lied, as we now know there were thousands of classified emails being sent or received over her private email. She lied about the number of devices she used.
Sending and receiving classified emails through private emails doesn’t appear to be a proper place of custody?
Apparently with FBI Director Comey you can’t compare apples to apples anymore. Deutch after all is not a Clinton. But he was a very good friend of FBI Director James Comey.
Bottom line, classified material resided in places that were not safe, whether on a home computer in Maryland or floating around the internet over a private email. The only difference here is the fact that Deutch actually admits to the wrong. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton utilized the very Clintonesque technique of never admit to any wrongdoing.
That’s their story and their sticking to it. But the fact remains, Deutch was a friend of Comey. It’s hard to believe he would disregard that back scratch.
