Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Real Story,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said that after FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that there will be no federal charges against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but her handling of classified information was “extremely careless,” she should face consequences for violating State Department rules.
Partial transcript as follows:
GUILFOYLE: This was compelling, significant legal news yesterday. Came as quite a surprise to many when you saw the director laying out quite extensive charges and facts detailing misuse and abuse and certainly security violations on behalf of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staff. Your thoughts?
RUBIO: Well what a lot of people don’t realize is beyond the criminality or non-criminality of this there is the issue of State Department rules.The State Department has rules. And it has clearly detailed there are sanctions and punishments for violating those rules. I promise you this, if what we know Hillary Clinton and her staff did, and if it had been anybody else in the State Department they would have been punished. And it would have gone to revoking their secutiy clearances, to being fired and to everything in between including long term non paid suspension etc. So what I’m asking Secretary Kerry to do, this is under his jurisdiction, is to make sure the appropriate measures are taken to now punish all these people for their reckless behavior, and that includes Hillary Clinton. Because wether or not the federal government or Justice Department finds it to be criminal, there is no doubt it’s negligence and violated State Department policy. And he needs to carry that out and not ignore it for partisan critical reasons.
GUILFOYLE: We had former Mayor Giuliani on after the news broke. He said if he was conducting an investigation, just the facts yesterday would preclude her from getting any type of security clearance moving forward. So how is it that she is fit to be able to serve as commander-in-chief dealing with foreign interests and other countries that would do us harm?
RUBIO: It’s been my argument when this first broke over a year and a half ago, that in fact, this disqualifies her from being the commander-in-chief of the Untied States. And I hope voters agree on that in November. Here’s someone under normal circumstances—would not have the authority, she would never again be allowed to have access. and her staff would never have access. They could be the people working for her in the White House. So whatever the rules are in the State Department for these violations, John Kerry needs to apply them. I hope he will. I’m not holding my breath to be quite frank with you.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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