He wasn’t a general at the time. He left the beloved Marine Corps in 2013.
He was the Secretary of Defense from 2017-2019.
He is a retired general.
They are still addressed as “General” and since Mattis served more than 20 years, he is subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
His crime is worse, because he was a Cabinet member who with held vital information from the President.
That was not his call to make.
He willingly took the assignment of SecDef, and in hindsight, my opinion is that he was a Deep state mole put there to keep an eye on Trump.
Both he and General Milley have betrayed Trump.
Notice this information is being unearthed only because Biden is getting destroyed right now, and this is the “what aboutism” that those leftist dipwads are always crying about.