Marco Rubio: Security risk to the U.S.
Sen. Marco Rubio once called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “irresponsible” for using a private email server while she served as the nation’s top diplomat. Recently, and now under the Trump spell, Rubio seems to have changed his tune when it comes to top secrets that can be used to destroy the U.S.
“This is really at its core a storage argument that they’re making. … I don’t think a fight over storage of documents is worthy of what they’ve done.” Those were the words uttered by Florida Senator Marco Rubio to a Miami TV news reporter in the aftermath of the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, where they seized illegally taken government records by former president Donald Trump.
So Rubio, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who defends the former president no matter the situation, felt that, as The Washingto Post reported, documents “describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, and found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month,” was much to do about a storage problem.
A storage problem?
Marco Rubio’s reaction to the stolen, top-secret, government records leaves one scratching one’s head. These top-secret files, which Trump assured earlier this year had all been returned, were actually stored, and not very safely, at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Palm Beach country club where people come and go and where security has been known to be lax — note the recent revelation of a Ukrainian woman posing as ‘heiress’ Anna De Rothschild who gained access to the Trump home by ingratiating herself with Trump and his entourage. And Rubio, the Senate’s top ranking intelligence committee member, a U.S. officials who should be safeguarding the nation’s most important secrets, passes off the stolen files as a “storage problem!”
In a fundraising email he has called it the “radical left’s witch hunt.”
As David Corn of Mother Jones wrote: “Rubio has been one of the loudest voices denouncing the bureau [the FBI] and amplifying the MAGA message that Trump has been unfairly victimized by Democrats and the Deep State.”
But why, Little Marco?
There are many reasons for Rubio’s reaction and support of Trump. One is the fact that he’s running a close reelection race against congresswoman Val Demings. Based on an average of the latest polls, Real Clear Politics has Rubio leading the Democrat, Demings, by 2.3 percentage points — well within most any survey’s margin of error. In other words, although still leaning Republican, this race is a toss-up.
Rubio knows this and knows he needs the Trump voters in Florida. As for the nation’s top secrets which he has sworn to protect? The heck with them as long as he wins his race. Which bring up the question every Florida voters should ask him or herself: Is Rubio up to the task? And can we trust him?
Marco does not deserve our respect
The Mar-a-Lago stolen files case brings up a comparison that also involves Rubio. It deals with the position the senator took when Hillary Clinton was being investigated for her handling of emails at the State Department when she was Secretary of State.
Here’s what Corn had to say in his Mother Jones article:
“A few years ago, Rubio adopted a much more aggressive approach to the mishandling of government records when Clinton’s emails were the issue. He blasted her as ‘irresponsible’ for using a personal email server for Department of State correspondence and voiced concern that she had made classified information vulnerable to foreign spy services. When FBI director James Comey publicly recommended Clinton not be prosecuted, Rubio proclaimed Clinton’s conduct was ‘disgraceful’ and complained she had left ‘sensitive and classified national security information vulnerable to theft and exploitation by America’s enemies.’ He added, ‘Her actions were grossly negligent, damaged national security and put lives at risk.’”
In his article, now referring to the present, Corn adds that “This week, the Washington Post reported that one of these documents described a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities and that some of the seized records ‘detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs.’”
Rubio must have seen something the polls have not revealed because he seems desperate. In the email to contributors where he goes after the “radical left” he also throws red meat to South Florida Cubans by writing that “I’ll say it plain and simple, using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from Marxist dictatorships, but now, we’re seeing it from the Biden administration.”
The Senate election in Florida is in November. The stakes are high — unless voters don’t consider nuclear secrets and other highly classified government information, and who has access to it, not very important.
I’ll let David Corn finish for me:
“Should the Republicans win the Senate in the midterm elections, Rubio might well become chair of the intelligence committee once more and, presumably, not care deeply about the possible threat Trump’s heist of top-secret records has posed to US national security. With his cavalier attitude toward the protection of secret material, Rubio might himself pose a national security risk.”
