Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell said that according to her sources, there is no “legal culpability” since there was “no intent” and that a motive would have to proved.
“Honestly, from my sources, and they go pretty high up including — including some of the people who are doing the review for the — inside the intelligence community, I don’t think there is the legal culpability here. I don’t think there is going to be what has been widely reported. For a bunch of reasons. You have to prove intent, you have to prove motive. I mean, you’re a lawyer. I only play one on television.
Scarborough, who prior to being a congressman practiced law in Florida, insisted that wasn’t true and questioned the defense Mitchell offered, which her sources had apparently laid out for her.
Partial transcript as follows:
SCARBOROUGH: You actually don’t. Whoever is telling you that — no, no, whoever is telling you that is not telling you what the statute actually says.
MITCHELL: No, no, no The statute says —
SCARBOROUGH: The statute also says that if you were reckless in the use of classified — use of information, then that also is an offense.
MITCHELL But here’s the problem with that. The statute says if you’re reckless. Take a look at what happened at the State Department last June, they shut down the State Department computer system for more than a month because it had been hacked. The official system.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
MITCHELL: Twenty-two million people who worked for the government or used to work for the government were hacked.
SCARBOROUGH: Are you — but that would only mean that somebody who had a home-brewed server in Chappaqua would be even more vulnerable. Is this their defense?
MITCHELL: Their defense could well be the whole system — the whole damn system is vulnerable. I’m just saying —
SCARBOROUGH: Good luck with the Justice Department on that.
(h/t Newsbusters)
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