Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks fired back at Hillary Clinton on Thursday, borrowing the former secretary of state's most famous insult to condemn her call for intelligence community employees to slow-walk classified information to Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte.
"I'm going to use Hillary Clinton's own words: deplorable," the Iowa Republican said on the Just the News, No Noise TV show. "That is disgusting behavior from a former secretary of state, from a former first lady, from a former senator."
The word choice was deliberate. Clinton famously branded millions of Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables" during her 2016 presidential campaign. Now a sitting member of Congress has turned the label squarely back on Clinton herself, not over a political gaffe, but over conduct that Miller-Meeks argued could endanger American lives during a period of elevated security threats.
Clinton appeared Wednesday on the "Democracy Docket" podcast, hosted by Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. When asked about President Trump's decision to replace former DNI Tulsi Gabbard with Pulte, Clinton did not simply criticize the appointment. She went further.
Clinton called Pulte "manifestly unqualified under the statute to hold that position" and described his appointment as "deeply insulting to the intelligence community." She said people should be "worried about everything" with Pulte in the role, given that the DNI has access to all of the nation's spy secrets.
Then came the line that drew the sharpest response. Clinton said she hopes there are "career and even political appointees in various of the agencies that are slow-walking or refusing to share information with Pulte."
That amounts to a former secretary of state publicly encouraging federal employees to defy the chain of command and withhold intelligence from the person the president designated to receive it.
Miller-Meeks framed Clinton's comments against the backdrop of two major events on American soil, the World Cup, which the United States is hosting, and the 250th anniversary of Independence Day. Both events raise threat levels and demand that the intelligence apparatus function without internal sabotage.
"We need to have all ears to the ground to prevent tragedies from happening, such as the 9/11 tragedy."
The congresswoman argued that Trump needs "every tool in his tool box" to keep the country safe, and that Clinton's call for bureaucratic resistance directly undermines that effort. "It certainly is unconscionable that she would say this," Miller-Meeks added.
The comparison to 9/11 was pointed. The intelligence failures that preceded the September 11 attacks are widely attributed in part to poor information-sharing among agencies. Clinton's open encouragement of information hoarding within the intelligence community invites precisely the kind of dysfunction that the post-9/11 reforms were designed to prevent.
Clinton's lecture about who should and should not handle classified material carries a particular irony given her own history. The FBI in 2016 found evidence that Clinton and her colleagues were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," according to a statement from then-FBI Director James Comey. The bureau linked to that finding in an official press release.
The scope of that carelessness was considerable. Fox News reported that approximately 60 of Clinton's emails had been flagged as containing classified data by investigators reviewing her private server correspondence. Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough III stated that Clinton's emails likely contained hundreds of disclosures of classified information. At least two emails were identified as containing "top secret" information, with one reportedly discussing the CIA drone program in Pakistan.
Clinton famously joked about the controversy at an Iowa campaign appearance, quipping about Snapchat: "I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves."
That a former official who routed top-secret intelligence through an unsecured private server now presumes to lecture career professionals about who can be trusted with classified material is a contradiction that speaks for itself. The FBI director who investigated Clinton's email practices has since faced his own legal troubles, a reminder that the accountability questions from that era remain unresolved.
Tulsi Gabbard announced in May that she would step down as DNI to help care for her husband as he battles cancer. Trump tapped Pulte as her replacement in an acting capacity. Since assuming the role, Pulte has laid off staffers within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, though the exact number has not been publicly disclosed.
Democrats have seized on the transition to challenge Pulte's qualifications. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News last month that the appointment amounted to turning "the keys of all of our intelligence agencies over [to] somebody so grossly unqualified who's shown he's willing to take information and misuse it, secret information."
Clinton went beyond Warner's criticism by not merely questioning Pulte's fitness but actively encouraging federal employees to obstruct his access to intelligence. She also questioned why no lawsuit had been filed to challenge his appointment, though she did not specify what statute she believed he violated or who should bring the case.
Clinton's call for bureaucratic resistance fits a broader pattern among prominent Democrats who have moved from policy criticism to encouraging active defiance of duly appointed officials. Former President Obama has faced similar scrutiny for lecturing on institutional independence while his own administration's record on those questions remains contested.
The practical effect of Clinton's advice, if followed, would be to create a shadow veto over presidential appointments. Career employees deciding for themselves which political leaders deserve access to classified information is not a safeguard. It is insubordination, and it is the kind of insubordination that can get people killed when threat levels are high and the intelligence pipeline needs to flow without obstruction.
Miller-Meeks made that point without ambiguity. A former secretary of state who was found to have been "extremely careless" with the nation's secrets is now urging others to withhold those same secrets from the president's chosen intelligence chief. The congresswoman did not need to reach for a harsh word. Clinton had already supplied the perfect one herself.
Congressional investigations into the conduct of senior political figures continue to expand on multiple fronts, and the appetite for accountability among Republican lawmakers shows no signs of fading.
What makes Clinton's comments more than a political sideshow is the operational reality they target. The DNI exists to coordinate intelligence across agencies and deliver it to the president. If career employees take Clinton's advice and begin deciding on their own which information reaches the acting director, the entire structure of post-9/11 intelligence reform breaks down.
The United States is hosting the World Cup. The nation is preparing to mark 250 years of independence. And a former secretary of state, one who mishandled classified material on her own watch, is publicly encouraging the intelligence community to go rogue.
Miller-Meeks called it deplorable. Given the stakes, that may be generous.
