That actually happened in 2012. He was discharged in 2013. It was prosecuted by a military court, not a civilian one. They play by different rules. Still, initially not even that happened, but then the guy decided to tell a Congressman what happened.
So what appears to have actually happened is that he unintentionally transmitted classified documents, self-reported and got a wrist slap/reprimand. Or, the same discretionary action and consideration was in play and his superiors declined to press a technical violation. But then the Major decided to play politics with the wrist slap, went running to his Congressman and the upper echelon was not impressed, reexamined their discretion (likely in light of both the nose thumb and the potential civil suit from the families of Marines who later died, a suit which has already materialized, by the way) and he got the honorable discharge boot.
But wait, there's more. It turns out that what got him in hot water wasn't even the email (sorry partisans) but the reopened investigation that led to:
[FONT=&]
Maj. Chip Hodge, an attorney for the government,
told the administrative hearing deciding Brezler’s fate in 2013 that Brezler illegally kept the classified material to aid in the writing of a memoir, the Marine Corps Times reported at the time. Investigators looking into the classified info breach allegedly discovered a 130-page manuscript of Brezler’s exploits in Afghanistan which contained a passage copied from a document involving Jan.
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[FONT=&]“This case isn’t about an email getting sent downrange from a nonsecure email account,” Hodge said, according to the Times. “It’s about why he had that documentation.” [/FONT]
Source: Fox News, 12/01/2015
Sure can. Just did and showed why.
Discretion means never having to say, it's over. The guy should have kept it in house. I suspect he self-reported as a technical nod to keep someone who didn't like him from producing grief down the line, was surprised by the reprimand in his file that hurt his long-term prospects, groused to his representative, which got back to his chain of command, they weren't happy so they looked harder to teach him a lesson, the look turned up the book he was cobbling along with the unfortunately classified attachment and they had what they needed to move him out without wrecking him, because of his service, and exposing themselves to a public black eye.
Seems to be how the facts string together, at any rate.