Former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier left prison Wednesday after serving nearly a year behind bars for mishandling classified information in a case that President Trump compared to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Saucier, now 30, admitted taking six photos inside a nuclear submarine and learned his penalty during the height of last year’s presidential campaign. His lawyers unsuccessfully requested what they called the “Clinton deal,” meaning little if any punishment.
After he got hard time instead, the Clinton-slamming Republican candidate invoked Saucier as an example of someone who did “nothing” compared to Clinton, against whom the FBI director recommended no charges.
“It’s kind of like coming back from deployment,” Saucier told the Washington Examiner in a phone conversation Wednesday after he was released and outfitted with an ankle monitor, which he must wear for 7 months.
Saucier returned home to Vermont a day before his daughter’s second birthday. His family’s cars were repossessed and his home is in foreclosure, he said, but he’s optimistic about finding a new career and moving on.
Trump said in January he was considering a pardon, but ultimately allowed Saucier to serve his prison sentence without giving one.
“I saw him, while I was in prison, talking about my case on the news and he was very vocal about how what happened to me was wrong,” Saucier recalled. “Obviously it was kind of an emotional rollercoaster hearing all that stuff and then nothing happening.”
The young father pleaded guilty last year to unlawfully retaining national defense information by taking the six photos inside the USS Alexandria with his cellphone in 2009, when he was 22 years old and working as a machinist mate in Connecticut.
Saucier argued the photos were innocent keepsakes and pointed to two co-workers caught taking photos inside the sub’s engine room who were not prosecuted. Prosecutors cast doubt on the explanation and said his conduct could have harmed the country.
The photos, discovered by someone who found Saucier’s phone in the trash, were deemed “confidential,” the lowest level for classification. By contrast, the FBI’s investigation found Clinton’s private email server contained at least 110 emails with classified information — including eight email chains with “top secret” information, 36 with “secret” information and eight with confidential information.
Trump eagerly compared the cases on the campaign trail. “That’s an old submarine; they’ve got plenty of pictures, if the enemy wants them, they’ve got plenty of them. He wanted to take a couple of pictures. They put him in jail for a year,” Trump said at one event.
Saucier admitted he knew he was not supposed to have taken them and conceded he attempted to destroy evidence after authorities questioned him. Clinton, by comparison, insisted she did not knowingly send or receive classified information and although emails were deleted, authorities did not allege that was part of a coverup.
FBI Director James Comey said in July 2016, just before Saucier’s August sentencing, that Clinton should not face charges despite her “extremely careless” handling of classified information as secretary of state because there was not sufficient evidence of criminal intent.
Saucier still hopes for a presidential pardon, even though the Justice Department denied the request to waive a five-year waiting period earlier this year. He said it would be nice to own guns, but that mostly he would like not be permanently branded a felon.
“I served my country for 11 years, I did two tours in the Middle East, and I would like to have my good name back, that’s what’s most important to me,” he said. “Nothing can give me back the year I lost with my daughter and wife in prison, but a pardon would definitely restore my good name.”
The former sailor said one big difference between himself and Hillary Clinton is that he lacked wealth and power, and said a close comparison also can be drawn with former CIA Director David Petraeus, who received probation after admitting he mishandled top secret information and lied to the FBI.
“I think they wanted to make an example of someone [and] I was some poor guy who couldn’t really put up a legal defense,” he said. “Why didn’t Clinton or any of her allies who did the same thing receive the same scrutiny?”
