Time to Strip Team Hillary of Its Security Clearances -- Forever *UPDATED*

Now that we know James Comey — who knows for a fact that the Clintons are essentially a political crime family, but for some mysterious reason has intervened on their behalf to prevent charges from being filed by the “Justice” Department against Hillary — isn’t going to save the nation from the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua, there’s only one thing left to do absent a Trump victory in November:

Pressure is growing on the State Department to revoke the security clearances of several of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides, potentially jeopardizing her ability to name her own national security team should she become president. The move could force Clinton to make an uncomfortable choice: abandon longtime advisers or face another political maelstrom by overriding the White House security agency.

It’s not clear if Clinton or her longtime aides Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan still hold active security clearances. The information is protected under the Privacy Act and absent permission from each person, the only way it can be made public is if State sees an overriding public interest in disclosing it — an unlikely scenario.

None of the aides implicated in the probe — Abedin, Sullivan and Cheryl Mills — are still employed at State. That makes it unlikely that they continue to hold security clearances, awarded on a need-to-know basis. But department spokesman John Kirby said earlier this week that former officials could still face “administrative sanctions” for past actions — sanctions that could in theory make it incredibly difficult to be approved for security clearance in the future.

Clinton, should she be elected president, would be functionally exempt from security vetting as a constitutional officer— it’s “the reason it was always indictment or bust” with Clinton, says Bradley Moss, a lawyer who specializes in classified information cases. The only circumstance in which she’s likely to become a “federal employee” again is if she’s elected president.

But for Abedin and Sullivan, the loss or rejection of their security credentials would be a career-ender in Washington.

And according to several lawyers who specialize in security clearances, anyone with the kind of documented track record that now dogs Abedin and Sullivan would struggle to retain their access to restricted information. Although no one was charged, FBI Director James Comey was unequivocal that Clinton and her aides acted “extremely carelessly.”

Today Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Congressman Pete Olson (R-TX) introduced the Taking Responsibility Using Secured Technologies (TRUST) Act of 2016 in the House. This legislation mirrors the legislation introduced in the Senate last week by Senator Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Gardner (R-CO). This bill would revoke Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security clearance as well as the security clearances of Secretary Clinton’s colleagues at the State Department who exhibited extreme carelessness in their handling of classified information. Additionally, the TRUST Act expresses the sense of Congress that Secretary Clinton should not have access to classified information again until she earns the legal right to such access.

The legislation follows the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) investigation into Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system in her capacity as Secretary of State. In an announcement earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey said that “there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and “none of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff.” The FBI uncovered several thousand additional emails related to her position, some of which contained classified material, that were not included in the 30,000 emails Clinton handed over to the State Department. Comey concluded the FBI’s findings with “we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.”