The classified documents were kept in various parts of the home, including in a bathtub. It was unclear why they were taken and kept — indeed, prosecutors didn't even venture a motive.

Still, a former FBI intelligence analyst in Kansas City will spend almost the next four years in prison for mishandling the documents, a federal judge ruled last week.

The analyst isn't alone. While such cases aren't routine, they aren't unprecedented — and prison time is a common outcome, even in cases where there was no apparent espionage or public leaking of information.

This should provide some important perspective as Republican politicians from Missouri and elsewhere continue to insist that former President Donald Trump has been singled out for unfair treatment with the federal criminal charges against him. In fact, their arguments come down to an insistence that he should get special treatment, and should be above the law. He shouldn't.

Kendra Kingsbury, 50, spent more than a dozen years working from the FBI's Kansas City office, and at some point began bringing documents to her Dodge City, Kansas home. Her lawyer offered no explanation for the behavior, other than to cite personal and family problems, implying there may have been mental health issues. Though she admitted having the documents once the government began looking for them, she didn't willingly give them back.

Does that sound familiar?

In some ways, the case against Trump is more damning than the one against Kingsbury. While prosecutors described her as being "unhelpful" in recovering the documents, there's been no reporting to indicate she lied about having them after being subpoenaed, or instructed others to lie, or moved them around her home to prevent their discovery, or suggested to anyone that they be destroyed to prevent the government from getting them.

Trump has been credibly accused of all of that, which is why the charges against him include obstruction of justice.

Yet prominent members of what used to be known as the law-and-order party have, from the moment the indictment against Trump became public, disparaged the Justice Department and demanded that Trump be allowed to get away with actions that have sent other Americans to prison.

Immediately after the charges became known, Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt declared, falsely, that "Joe Biden has now indicted his top political opponent." In fact, a grand jury indicted him, at the behest of a special prosecutor. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley called it "an assault on our democracy, pure and simple" — as if holding a former president to the same standards as everyone else is somehow anti-democratic.

The difference between Trump and others who have taken records, Hawley has maintained, is that the Presidential Records Act "allows him to decide what to take with him or not." That's a highly disputable interpretation. And in any case, there's no part of the act that gives an ex-president the legal right to lie to the government about his possession of records and to evade a subpoena, which Trump allegedly did.

The conviction of Kingsbury and other federal employees in recent years is a positive indication that American justice shows no favoritism based on official standing (or former standing). Whether that noble principle applies all the way up to a former president may be determined by how the case against Trump plays out going forward.

But it should not escape notice that Hawley, Schmitt and other top names in the GOP have already rendered their own judgments. They are calling for nothing less than putting one man above the law.

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