Trump Justice officials demanded charges for Hillary, Biden for classified docs scandals. They’re silent on SignalGate

(CNN) — When Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden faced intense scrutiny for their handling of classified material, top officials now serving in Trump’s Justice Department and FBI demanded criminal probes and severe penalties.

Yet today, those same figures – including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, and DC interim US Attorney Ed Martin – have all declined to publicly criticize senior Trump officials who used Signal to share military attack plans in a chat that inadvertently included a journalist.

The Trump administration has denied any classified information was discussed in the text messages released by The Atlantic about plans to bomb rebels in Yemen, but CNN reported that information shared in the chat was highly classified at the time it was sent.

Bondi, now the country’s highest ranking law enforcement official, vigorously defended the officials who participated in the Signal chat, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and suggested it was unlikely their actions would be investigated criminally. But previously, Bondi argued that both Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin needed to face charges after emails that contained classified information were found on the computer of her ex-husband, former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner.

“This has everything to do with the security of our country,” Bondi said in January 2018 on Fox News. “When you have the top-secret security clearance that Huma Abedin had – you know when you send those emails that you are violating the law, and there is no objective law enforcement officer in this country that would not charge her based on that. Alright? No one.”

Bondi repeatedly framed the Clinton email investigation as a clear-cut legal issue in her appearances on Fox News reviewed by CNN’s KFile, saying that “we live in a nation of laws” and that Clinton “jeopardized our national security.”

On Thursday, Bondi defended the officials in the Signal chat, saying the chat included “sensitive information, not classified.”

“What we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission,” she told reporters. “If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton’s home, the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said Bondi’s public comments last week “speak for themselves.”

Similarly, Patel has previously called for harsh prison sentences for leaking classified information.

“A leak of classified information — that’s a federal offense punishable by, I think, over a decade in prison, off the top of my head,” Patel said in 2021 when discussing leaks to the media during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. “It’s a pretty serious matter. But no one’s been prosecuted for a leak of classified information.”

In another interview in September 2024, Patel criticized the decision by special counsel Robert Hur not to charge Biden for allegedly mishandling classified documents.

“They let the guy off the hook,” he said of Biden, who was investigated over classified documents found at his private residence in Delaware. “They just said it doesn’t matter … you’ve made up a new legal standard that applies to exonerate him and to not even charge him.”

Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and now the FBI’s second-in-command, frequently also accused Democrats and the Biden administration of mishandling classified information and using encrypted apps to avoid accountability, including the app Signal.

“This was a travesty of justice, there’s no other way to look at it,” Bongino said regarding the recommendation by former FBI Director James Comey not to charge Hillary Clinton in 2016. “And having worked as a federal agent for 12 years of my life and as a local police officer before that, I’m intimately familiar with the elements of crimes, the elements of an investigation, and good, solid, packaged federal cases. This thing was in a bow.”

“What Jim Comey laid out yesterday that for 15 minutes what Mrs. Clinton did — in the federal system, you can put forth information in a complaint or an indictment. If that went in front of a judge and jury, he could have convicted Mrs. Clinton just on that information alone.”

In since-deleted tweets, Bongino also took aim at Abedin and questioned if former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may have used unsecure communications to handle classified information.

“Either Huma knew she was sending classified emails to Weiner, & was doing so illegally, therefore she committed a crime. Or, Huma didn’t know sending classified emails was a crime & had absolutely no business having access to the Clinton political machine & insiders in our govt,” he said in a deleted tweet from late 2017.

In a February 2018 tweet Bongino wrote, “Here’s the next shoe to drop -> was Andy McCabe using secure comms to send/receive classified information? Someone should check on that.” McCabe, a longtime target of Bongino’s, was a part of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Patel and Bongino have not publicly criticized the officials involved in the Signal chat. The FBI declined to comment to CNN.

Ed Martin, now the acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia and the official who could oversee any prosecution related to the Signal chat, has previously taken a hardline stance on the handling of classified material.

“When he took them he couldn’t have done anything but broken the law, period,” Martin said on his radio show in 2023, referring to Biden’s possession of classified documents.

In a 2018 tweet, Martin wrote that “almost anyone” who leaked classified information would “go to jail.” And in 2024, he asked, “Was it not a crime for a vice president to remove top secret and classified documents from the White House and store them unsecured in his garage…? If it’s not, it should be.”

Martin has not commented publicly on whether the Signal chat warrants investigation.

A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia declined to comment to CNN.

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