The facts are that unsecured classified documents were found in the homes of Trump, Biden and Pence. There is no question that in Biden’s and Pence’s case this was simple sloppiness, while Trump, if the evidence in the indictment is to be believed, actively attempted to hold on to these documents, disclosed classified information to those not cleared the receive it, and actively obstructed the attempts to find and recover the documents. If, when all is said and done, he doesn’t serve jail time in a federal prison as a consequence it will be a grave miscarriage of justice. He has attempted to equate what he did with Biden and Pence, and with classified information on Hillary Clinton’s unsecured servers. As they say, that dog won’t hunt!
And yet… And yet…..
Back several decades ago when I handled classified information in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, essentially a windowless bank vault where we did our work), every document was numbered and signed out to a particular person, and that person was held responsible for that document, required to keep it in a locked safe in the SCIF at night, and never permitted to remove it from the SCIF. On the day I left Lockheed-Martin I spent a full half day tracking down a document signed out to me that a colleague had borrowed – I wasn’t allowed to leave until we had found that document and returned it to document control. If I were found even today to have retained any classified documents, I have no doubt I would serve time in a federal prison, whatever my excuse.
We were required to take a training course every year on handling classified information, and the penalties for mishandling that information – taking a document out of the SCIF, or disclosing the contents to anyone not cleared to the required level – were draconian. And indeed people go to prison for mishandling classified information.
In 2016 a US Navy sailor was jailed for a year for simply taking a selfie in the classified reactor area of a nuclear submarine. In 2013 a retired Lieutenant Colonel was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for taking classified documents home and showing them to his girlfriend. In 2016 a former National Security Agency contractor was sentenced to nine years in prison for taking classified documents home. In 2017 a former defense contractor was sentenced to three years in prison for unlawfully retaining classified information, stored on compact discs and computer hard drives that he kept at his home in Texas. In 2019 a former NSA employee was sentenced to eight years in prison for retaining classified information on her phone and in her home.
Ordinary people go to prison for doing what Trump did. But what about Washington insiders? Hillary Clinton got nothing more than some bad press for her misdeed. In 2015 retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus, a former CIA director, got two years probation for taking home classified information and sharing with his mistress, who was not cleared to see it. In 2005 former U.S. national security adviser Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to knowingly removing classified documents from the National Archives, for which he lost his security clearance for three years and paid a $50,000 fine. And of course there are apparently no consequences at all for Biden or Pence for their carelessness.
So I can understand why some Trump supporters think he is being handled differently. He is indeed being handled differently than most Washington insiders, who are apparently protected by the system. I think he should serve some jail time for his actions, but I also think the Washington insiders ought to be subject to the same consequences as everyone else, which they clearly are not. And so I can understand why some Trump supporters think the system is rigged – they are right.
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