WASHINGTON – The legal watchdog group Judicial Watch isn't happy with FBI Director James Comey's decision not to recommend indicting Hillary Clinton. In a release Wednesday, Judicial Watch calls Comey a "liar and a fraud," and points to his agency's efforts to convict a Navy resuervist of the same crime last summer.
Illustrating that FBI Director James Comey is a liar and a fraud, his agency helped convict a Navy reservist last summer of the same crime that he just cleared Hillary Clinton of committing. In that case the reservist from northern California got criminally charged—as per FBI recommendation—for having classified material on personal electronic devices that weren’t authorized by the government to contain such information. The FBI investigation didn’t reveal evidence that the reservist intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel, so he was just being “extremely careless” like Clinton and her top aides.
Similar offenses, vastly different outcome. The key factor, of course, is that one subject is a regular Joe without Clinton-like political connections. His name is Bryan H. Nishimura and last July he pleaded guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials after the FBI found such materials were copied and stored in at least one “unauthorized and unclassified system.” Clinton had droves of classified and top secret materials in an “unauthorized and unclassified system.” Nishimura had been deployed to Afghanistan as a regional engineer for the U.S. military and had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers, according to the FBI announcement, which defines the reservist’s crime in the following manner; “handled classified materials inappropriately.” So did Clinton on a much larger scale.
Last July Nishimura pleaded guilty to “unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials” and was sentenced to two years of probation, a $7,500 fine and forfeiture of personal media containing classified materials. He was further ordered to permanently surrender all government security clearance. Hillary Clinton could soon have the highest security clearance available if she gets elected president making Comey’s inconceivable recommendation that “no charges are appropriate in this case” all the more outrageous. Incredibly, during his 15-minute press conference this week Comey provided details of how Clinton violated the law by exchanging dozens of email chains containing classified and top secret information and how she mishandled national defense information on her outlaw email server. The FBI director even outlined how Clinton compromised the country’s national defense to “hostile actors” yet he asserts Clinton and her cohorts didn’t intend to break the law. “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,” Comey said, “there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Enough to be criminally charged like the Navy reservist from northern California.
When Comey, the federal prosecutor in the Martha Stewart case, put the television celebrity in jail for participating in an insider trading scheme, he acknowledged the importance of not granting special treatment to a rich and famous person. Stewart went to prison for obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a sudden stock sale that helped her avoid losing thousands of dollars. In an interview with his college newspaper a few years after Stewart’s conviction Comey, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that if Stewart were Jane Doe she would have been prosecuted. “I thought of my hesitation about the case due to someone being rich and famous, and how it shouldn’t be that way,” Comey said. “I decided we had to do it.”
Comey will appear before a U.S. House Oversight Committee Thursday at 10:00 am EST.
