Barack Obama’s Justice Department has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks of information under the World War I era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined — yet Hillary Clinton managed to avoid becoming part of that statistic Tuesday morning.
FBI Director James Comey decided the bureau would urge that charges not be brought against former Secretary of State Clinton for her mishandling of classified information on her private email servers.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is information that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey told reporters, adding that the investigation found that Clinton used numerous email servers and several devices during her tenure at the State Department.
The FBI announcement came on the heels of former President Bill Clinton meeting with Department of Justice Attorney General Loretta Lynch last month. Other government officials were not so fortunate with the Obama Justice Department.
The Justice Department swiftly prosecuted six federal government officials between 2009 and 2012 under the Espionage Act, Bloomberg News first reported noting the administration’s number of record-high prosecutions under the law. By 2014, nine people were prosecuted under the spy law. Four others were prosecuted under Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush. One of those four cases, under Nixon, was dismissed two years later.
One of the five who was convicted was Stephen Kim, a former State Department contractor who served a 13-month prison sentence for violating the spy act. The case lasted for five years until he pleaded guilty to leaking information about North Korea’s nuclear program to Fox News reporter James Rosen.
International Business Times’ David Sirota noted the case of Navy sailor Bryan H. Nishimura on Tuesday, who pleaded guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials. – READ MORE