Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, had a testy argument with America's Newsroom host Bill Hemmer over Hillary Clinton's continuing email scandal.
Emails from Davis are among those which have been released by the State Department, including one the Weekly Standard called the "DC's most cringe-inducing document ever."
"Four of these 22 emails are labeled ‘SAP’, which essentially means they're too secret for even the FBI agents to see it. They are too secret for members of Congress to even view it. This is drone information. It's information about moles working in other countries. This is the top of the heap when it comes to our national secrets. Now, Lanny, do you believe negligence is part of the law?" Hemmer said.
"First of all, negligence is not part of the law. And secondly, she wasn't negligent any more than Colin Powell or Condi Rice was in forwarding emails," Davis said.
"And I don't know what you mean by ‘SAP’ but it's not a classified document if it says ‘SAP’. If you're questioning judgement of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton forwarding what they didn't regard as classified and there's no label on it, you're allowed to disagree with that, but don't say it might lead to criminal behavior because it didn't for them."
"Reading from Judge (Andrew) Napolitano's piece from March 3, OK, SAP is a subcategory of Top Secret and it constitutes the highest level of protected secrecy for the upmost protection of the government's gravest secrets," Hemmer said. "That's SAP."
"OK, well, if that's SAP, it's not classified. I've never heard of it until this moment that there was any problem with any email being labeled contrary to our classified system," Davis said.
Davis also complained repeatedly about Clinton being scrutinized, but not former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had also handled classified emails outside of the State Department's network.
"At least have the same standard on Colin Powell. Why are you not asking about Colin Powell?" Davis said.
Perhaps because Colin Powell is not currently running for President of the United States. That is not a double standard as Davis later claimed.