Trump pardons former Navy sailor imprisoned for taking photos on nuclear submarine, White House...

When I was at a training command, a sailor on one of the ships did something very similar. As far as I know, he is still in jail... so, not huge fan.

OK, this is not the forum that I ever expected I would have to explain the enforcement of classified information laws to because I thought military personnel were some of the best educated on this subject, but due to some of the comments and especially the White House's reference to the Hillary Clinton case, it appears I may have assumed incorrectly. Let me explain why this particular case is different from that and many other cases. I was the DA Civilian Supervisor for the Network & Switch Branch of the Network Enterprise Center at Fort Knox, Ky. for 5 years. This position required me and my staff to be extremely well educated and cognizant of all the aspects of classified information rules and regs. We assisted the Information Assurance Division in its duties enforcing classified information enforcement. Secretary Clinton was guilty of what we refer to in the IT world as "Spillage", i.e. a case where classified info is transferred (spilled) into an unclassified system. This occurs literally thousands of times each year in the DOD alone by civilian and military personnel. I can't imagine what the rate of occurrence is for non-DOD organizations but my guess is it might be even higher. Based on my personal experience it occurs at Fort Knox an average of 1 to 2 times a week. This may be a little higher than typical Army bases due to the fact that Knox houses the Army Human Resources Center where a lot of classified info is processed and handled. But anywhere there is access to classified digital material it occurs. In these cases the info is usually only written but could include diagrams or pictures as attachments, but this is rare. In 99.9 per cent of these cases the spillage is unintentional and in those cases there is no pursuit of criminal charges and rarely anything other than a counseling statement issued to the offender. Each case is looked at on its own merit and the Commanders have a lot of discretion. Obviously repeated occurrences by the same individual can draw more severe discipline. This is due to the way the regs for digital info are written due to the advent of Email into the information realm and how easy it is to do this unintentionally in the digital environment where personnel have access to both systems. I should say that in my personal experiences most of these incidents involved a few lines of text or even an entire document that would only present a security risk if coupled with other classified documents and/or info that the bad guys would have to have as well. So, in these cases there would have to be reason and evidence to suspect the individual did this intentionally before charges of any kind could be pursued. According to the FBI, this was the case with the Clinton emails in question. So, anyone with a working knowledge of these regs should NOT have been surprised nor even concerned by the FBI's handling of the Secretary Clinton case. If they charged her, they would have had to charge thousands of other Government personnel with a crime as well and this would obviously have serious negative impact on the entire government work force. This was then and is now only a political issue because her opposition chose to make it one knowing that most voters would not know anything about classified information laws (I would assume that the Congressmen and Senators who were shouting "lock her up!" knew better but perhaps I assume incorrectly there as well as I did with this audience. . However, this sailor's situation is completely different although it may have been equally unintentional to the "Spillage" incidents (hence my problem with the White House's characterization of this incident). Although I have no problem with the pardoning of the sailor, his offense was more serious because it could have been a lot more damaging by itself to the Navy than a few sentences of spilled text and I feel like anyone on board a nuclear submarine should be adequately trained as to what was allowed and not allowed. Just as an additional example, the General Patreas case (which I have heard many people bring up in the argument for charging Clinton) was much different as he admitted to removing classified material from a secure safe or SCIFF as some secure rooms are called and provided it to an unauthorized person. A clear violation of the law.

Eh I think with cases like this motive has everything to do with it. If it was shown to be a reasonable possibility that his excuse was legit I'm ok with it. BUT I don't understand how you can go after Hillary for mishandling sensitive info and let this guy off. I understand there was hypocrisy on the other side but as trumps in office his is the only one that impacts the country.