Comparisons Between Major Jason Brezler, Hillary Clinton Email Cases- Mostly Truth!
Summary of eRumor:
Comparisons between the cases of Major Jason Brezler, a Marine who was accused of sending confidential information over a private email account that saved American lives, and Hillary Clinton have gone viral.
The Truth:
Similarities between the Major Jason Brezler and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sending classified information over personal email accounts ring mostly true.
First, its important to note that neither Brezler nor Clinton faced criminal charges for sending classified documents over private email accounts and/or private email servers.
A panel of officers recommended that he be discharged from the Marine Corps during an administrative hearing — but he wasn’t charged criminally.
Second, investigators found that Brezler had sent more than 100 classified documents with his personal email account — not just the one involving a corrupt Afghan police chief.
That situation unfolded in 2012 when Major Jason Brezler sent an email containing a classified document from his personal Yahoo! Account to warn a fellow Marine that Sarwar Jan, an Afghan police chief, was corrupt, Foreign Policy reports:
Brezler had responded in July 2012 to a request for information from deployed Marines about the police chief, Sarwar Jan, who Brezler helped to oust from power in another district in Afghanistan during a deployment spanning parts of 2009 and 2010. On August 10, 2012, just weeks after Brezler sent his warning, the police chief’s teenage servant and alleged sex abuse victim, Aynoddin, opened fire on a U.S. base, killing three Marines and critically wounding a fourth. Now, Brezler is expected to go before an administrative board in December that could oust him from the Marine Corps.
Lt. Gen. Richard Mills took action against Brezler for sending the classified document via personal email account (even though he reportedly saved lives by doing so), and following an administrative hearing in 2013, a panel of officers recommended that Brezler be discharge from the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps Times reports:
The Pentagon’s investigative agency has cleared the commanding general of Marine Forces Reserve of whistleblower reprisal against a Marine civil affairs officer who reached out to a member of Congress for help.
In a new report, the Defense Department Inspector General’s office found that while Lt. Gen. Richard Mills did take adverse administrative action against Maj. Jason Brezler — touted in media reports last year as a hero for warning about a war-zone threat — Mills’ actions were not motivated by retaliation.
After FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau would not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a personal email server, despite “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” there was public outcry from those who compared the cases of Brezler and Clinton.
For his part, Major Bezler, who has been locked in a legal battle over his handling of classified information, said through an attorney that he would use Comey’s determination about Clinton’s use of a personal email server to argue his case, the Washington Post reports:
An attorney for Brezler, Michael J. Bowe, said that he intends to cite the treatment of Clinton “as one of the many, and most egregious examples” of how severely Brezler was punished. FBI Director James B. Comey announced Tuesday that he would not recommend the U.S. government pursue federal charges against Clinton, but he rebuked her “extremely careless” use of a private, unclassified email server while serving as secretary of state. The FBI found that 110 of her emails contained classified information.
So, comparisons between the two cases ring mostly true. Neither Clinton nor Brezler faced criminal charges for sending the classified documents — but Brezler faced substantial punishment from superior officers who recommended his discharge.