Correct. While Clinesmith didn’t commit the most egregious crime, his crime was by far & away, the easiest to prove. Falsifying documents presented under penalty of perjury is....perjury and then lying about to federal investigators is an additional crime, which Clinesmith apparently did on more than one occasion. It’s a slam-dunk case and almost always results in a prison sentence of roughly a year (or several) unless the accused is a cooperating witness, just ask Scooter Libbey and Martha Stewart.
And yet, Bob Barr’s DoJ couldn’t even get that. They settled for something that didn’t even come with any prison time.
What others did is a far more nuanced, subtle case that unless there’s one or more cooperating witnesses, it’s unlikely a conviction could ever be realized. The fact of the matter is through the years Congress has ceded to the Executive SWEEPING authority to initiate all kinds of different investigations, both criminal and ‘national intelligence’ and using that authority, they can pry deeply into the lives of innocent Americans. Those statutes don’t say much about instances when they’re abused for nefarious ends....by design, I imagine.
Forgive my edit of your excerpt--done to save space and hold attention. The last point is the very thing I was wondering about; is it possible Clinesmith earned the leniency he received?