Back in 2009, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, defected to the United States. What ensued was a complicated story that resulted in Amiri claiming he’d been abducted by the CIA, tortured, released, and finally repatriated to Iran. His heroic welcome from the Great Satan in 2010 was followed by his arrest for treason. Today the Iranians announced they had executed him.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton was on Face the Nation and the subject came up.

TRANSCRIPT

JOHN DICKERSON: Iran announced today that they executed a scientist who they believe helped the United States reveal news about it its nuclear program. Let me ask you about Donald Trump as president. Have you gotten more or less confident in his job and ability to handle the commander-in-chief position since you endorsed him?

TOM COTTON: Well, John, I know the media is obsessed with Donald Trump. I’m not going to respond to every single thing that Donald Trump has to say or that Hillary Clinton says. I’m not going to follow the back and forth on the campaign trail. What’s ultimately going to matter in the long term is not who won or lost a week in the campaign but whether the American people are safe. You mentioned the Iranian scientists that was recently executed. Now, of course, I’m not going to comment on what he may or may not have done for the United States government. But in the emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server there were conversations among her senior advisors about this gentleman. That goes to show just how reckless and careless her decisions was to put that kind of highly classified information on a private server but I think her judgment is not is not suited to keep this country safe.

Indeed. As POLITICO reports, Amiri was discussed openly on Hillary Clinton’s unclassifed email system and those emails have been since revealed to the public. What the conversations do is establish rather definitively that Amiri was a defector who became disgruntled and fearful about the fate of his family and decided to roll the dice an attempt to return home.

The point is that even though the Iranians accepted him home as a hero, something happened in 2011, while Hillary Clinton was still running her hillbilly email system that led the Iranians to abruptly charge him with treason. The best guess about that is that emails surfaced, more likely than not from the Russians, that Amiri had cooperated with the US in his debriefing. Had she not used that system, it is entirely likely that Amiri would be alive today.

We only know about Amiri because he was a pretty high profile case. We will never know how many small fry died under torture, were disappeared, or were executed because Hillary Clinton’s emails gave enemy intelligence services just enough information to spot them.

The unfortunate thing is that Donald Trump is just as reckless in his actions as Hillary. He simply hasn’t been given the chance to kill anyone yet.