CNN reminded viewers Monday, in the wake of the egregious lapse in security that allowed a journalist access to the Trump administration’s war plans, of the fervor with which some of the same officials had discussed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
On The Source, clips were shown of now-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now,” Hegseth, a Fox News co-host in 2016, said at the time.
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That same year, Rubio, then a senator for Florida, told the right-wing network that “nobody is above the law—not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is.”
Rubio, in a clip not shown on CNN but which has nevertheless made the rounds, said in 2015, “The exposure of sensitive information to foreign intelligence agencies by communicating in an insecure manner is incompetence, it is malpractice, it’s inexcusable.”
Radcliffe, meanwhile, had told Fox News in March 2019 that “mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act.”
And Waltz, who added The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal chat, was mentioning Clinton’s emails just two years ago, along with then-President Joe Biden having classified documents in his home and his former office in Washington, D.C. Authorities in each case deemed that neither matter warranted criminal charges.
Clinton herself acknowledged Monday the irony of the past right-wing outrage in light of the Trump administration allowing—unintentionally or not—a journalist to see war plans before being carried out.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she wrote on X.
