Paul Ryan: Hillary should lose her access to classified information

House Speaker Paul Ryan said twice in the past 24-hours that he believes Hillary Clinton should lose her access to classified information in light of the findings of the FBI investigation.

Advertisement

Ryan first made the comments Tuesday night toward the end of an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show. He repeated the statements during a Wednesday morning press conference saying, “I think the DNI, Clapper, should deny Hillary Clinton access to classified information during this campaign, given how she so recklessly handled classified information.

“That’s point one. Point two, Director Comey’s presentation shredded the claims that Secretary Clinton made throughout the year with respect to this issue. He laid out a case, how the things she had been saying she had or had not done were false. So we have seen nothing but stonewalling and dishonesty from Secretary Clinton on this issue and that means there are a lot more questions that need to be answered.”

Ryan went on to point out that presidential candidates get “access to deeply classified material once you leave the convention as the nominee.” “With no indictment occurring but with a call for administrative action, I think it’s the least we can do given how she was so reckless in handling classified material,” Ryan added.

The call for administrative action was apparently a reference to a statement made by Director Comey Tuesday after he announced he would not be recommending prosecution:

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.

Advertisement

White House spokesman Josh Earnest rejected Speaker Ryan’s call for accountability for Clinton. The Hill reports:

“What the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [DNI] has indicated is that they expect those briefings to move forward after the party conventions,” Earnest said.
“And the expectation that the DNI has is that they’ll provide the same information to both candidates,” he added. “We should leave those decisions in the hands of our intelligence professionals and not risk them being sullied by the political debate.”
You have to appreciate the sheer audacity of this statement. Earnest is suggesting we wouldn’t want politics to interfere in the handling of classified intelligence. We’re supposed to put out of our minds that she did exactly that for 4 years as Secretary with her private server that kept all of her email out of reach of FOIA requests. We’re also supposed to forget that she and her campaign have been lying outlandishly for more than a year, all of it clearly in the service of her political ambitions. But now that the truth has finally come out, the White House doesn’t want to sully this pristine issue with any politics.
Here is a portion of Speaker Ryan’s remarks published by the Associated Press:

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement