Last week, Marco Rubio leaked the classified detail that the new metadata program authorized by USA Freedom Act obtains records from “a large number” of companies. Yesterday, he leaked more classified details about the program, revealing that some of the companies in question aren’t subject to FCC regulations on phone companies (which require companies hold records for 18 months).

CHUCK TODD:

Your campaign has been pretty critical of one of your rivals, Senator Ted Cruz, for his vote on the U.S.A. Freedom Act. And Senator Mike Lee of Utah, somebody that you have a tax plan with, you guys are certainly allies on a lot of things, he has said that your rhetoric has been not based in fact and that it is not true, what you’ve been saying, that somehow federal officials can’t use the U.S.A. Freedom Act, use the courts to track the phone numbers that are necessary.

MARCO RUBIO:

Well on this issue, not only is he wrong, but others that argue that are wrong. We had a program that allowed us to collect the phone records, basically the phone bill. Not the content of your conversations or your emails or anything like that. Just your phone bill of every American. And it was stored.

Only 16 people in the U.S. government could look at that. And they could only look at it if they got a court order from a privacy court, from a FISA court to go in and look at those phone records. And they retained them for a significant period of time. Under this new law, we are trusting the phone companies to hold those records.

And all of these phone companies have different periods of time that they hold it. Some will hold it for 18 months. Some will hold it for six months. This is a valuable tool. If in fact you have identified someone as a potential terrorist or if in fact someone carries out a terrorist activity, the ability to look at who they’ve been calling and who they’ve been talking to is part of a larger puzzle that you can put together to see what network they’ve been working with, who they’ve been communicating with.

We have now lost that capacity in many cases.

For a guy who’s trying to out-hawk his presidential rivals, Marco Rubio sure leaks classified information frequently. And make no mistake. He’s leaking this classified information for political gain, after having been read into that classified information while serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

I don’t know why Rubio thinks revealing the details of this program that the Administration deliberately misled the public about qualifies him to be President.

I just want to know when he’s going to be kicked off the Intel Committee.