During last night’s vice presidential debate, one exchange in particular between Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia struck a chord with Kathleen Saucier.
Mrs. Saucier is the mother of U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier.
The following transcript excerpt is from The Washington Post:
Pence: If your son or my son handled classified information the way Hillary Clinton did...
Quijano: . . . one hundred thousand of them children — Governor . . .
Pence: . . . they'd be court martialed.
Kaine: That is absolutely false and you know that.
Pence: Absolutely true.
Kaine: And you know that, Governor.
Quijano: Governor . . .
Pence: It's absolutely true.
Quijano: Gentlemen, please.
Kaine: Because the FBI did an investigation.
Quijano: Gentlemen.
Kaine: And they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further. Sorry.
Petty Officer Saucier was sentenced in August to a year in prison and a fine of 100 dollars for taking six photographs of the USS Alexandria’s classified propulsion system when he worked as a machinist in its engine room as a 22 year old in 2009.
It was only discovered that these photos were taken after his cellphone was found by the waste transfer station foreman in Hampton, Conn. The cell phone was discovered in a Dumpster and the foreman decided to keep it as a replacement for his phone.
After charging and turning on the phone he noticed that the phone contained the photographs which he showed to a retired Navy chief, who made the fateful decision to call the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).
According to Saucier’s attorney Derrick Hogan, Mr. Saucier had admitted that he knew when he took the pictures in 2009 that they were classified and that he did so out of the misguided desire to keep these pictures in order to one day show his family and his future children what he did while he was in the Navy.
The defense also noted the cases of two other sailors attached to the same unit that took similar photographs and received a slap on the wrist in comparison. Their punishments included a $560 docking of pay and in one instance a one-grade reduction in rank.
Investigators never found any evidence that Mr. Saucier had ever shared the photographs and Kathleen Saucier told Fox New Channel’s “On the Record W/Greta Van Susteren” in September, than investigators tried to imply that she was a co-conspirator in a scheme to take and sell photographs to Russia.
The defense made their best efforts to equate the petty officers case with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email scandal while federal prosecutors accused the defense of, “grasping at highly imaginative and speculative straws in trying to further draw a comparison to the matter of Secretary Hillary Clinton based upon virtually no understanding and knowledge of the facts involved, the information at issue, not to mention any issues if intent and knowledge."
He is scheduled to receive an other than honorable discharge for 11 years of otherwise honorable service. The Judge assigned to the case, Stefan Underhill said, “If I thought you transmitted this information to a foreign government, the statutory maximum would not be sufficient punishment. That is treason. I’m not convinced you did that.”
He further opined, “You don’t need to have transmitted it to have broken the law. You don’t need to have shared it. It’s the fact that it’s there that it could be shared.”
The fact that classified emails were transmitted to and stored on an unsecured server was not enough to bring an indictment against the democratic nominee for president according to her running mate Sen. Kaine but a simple fact check disproves his claim that in a matter of mishandling classified information, “there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further. Sorry.”
Julio Rivera is an entrepreneur, small business consultant and political activist. He contributes to RightWingNews.com and NewsNinja2012.com, and had previously covered boxing and baseball for the now defunct "The Urban News" in his native Paterson, N.J. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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