Ever since the FBI searched his premises at Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the boxes of files he kept there unlawfully, former President Donald Trump has tried to distract attention by bawling about "her emails" — the electronic documents that prompted the FBI to investigate Hillary Clinton and almost certainly cost her the 2016 election.

For years, Trump has whined that Clinton somehow escaped the punishment she merited — amid shrieks of "Lock her up!" from his cultists — and now complains that he is somehow the victim of a "double standard" because the FBI is investigating his apparent theft of national security materials. "Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable," he said earlier this month.

In fact, she endured many months of an intrusive investigation that aside from the political price, cost her heavily in legal fees and reputational damage — despite the fact that she was fully exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing or intent by the Justice Department.

Rather than benefiting from favorable treatment by the FBI, Clinton was the target of a concerted smear campaign by Trump allies within the bureau. Their internal campaign led James Comey, then FBI director, to brazenly violate strict Justice Department political guidelines by discussing her case publicly, only weeks before the November 2016 election — while at the same time concealing the counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign's collusion with the Kremlin.

So, while the differences between the Clinton and Trump cases are vast indeed, they leave little space for the phony indignation expressed by the former president and his associates.

What we know about Hillary Clinton's emails is that of the many thousands examined by the FBI, only a tiny proportion — a number in the single digits — were deemed to have been "classified." Of those, none disclosed sensitive information that could have jeopardized national security, such as nuclear weapons secrets, but involved drone strikes that had already been reported in national news outlets. Most of the emails deemed secret had either been classified after the fact or improperly marked in the first place.

As Comey explained at the time, the FBI found no evidence that Clinton, her aides or her attorneys had intentionally withheld any information from the State Department, the National Archives or the Justice Department, or obstructed the investigation in any way.

We know far less about the documents that Trump allegedly removed from the White House, but what has been reported so far draws a sharp contrast with the Clinton emails episode. According to the search warrant and receipt released by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Trump evidently absconded with hundreds of hard copies of highly classified documents — all properly marked — that implicated national security and defense matters.

The Justice Department plainly suspects him of violating the Espionage Act, of hiding or destroying those sensitive documents, and of obstructing the government's efforts to locate and retrieve them.

In other words, Trump acted with purpose and in direct violation of the law, including the Presidential Records Act. He continued to defy the law even after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for documents he had withheld — which was why the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago to recover them.

As we learned more about the substance of Clinton's emails, their importance diminished to the vanishing point. The opposite is true of Trump's purloined documents, whose significance only seems to be increasing.

That's why Trump and his henchmen now insist that he had "declassified" all those papers, and many others too, supposedly for the sake of transparency. But top officials of his administration have openly ridiculed that assertion, which is absurd on its face, as a lie. Much like his election lies, it is a hollow claim, devoid of any supporting facts or evidence.

Protecting national security requires a careful declassification process, even when the president wishes to alter the status of specific documents. For Trump to void secrecy with a wave of his hand would create a state of chaos, gravely damaging national security. And since he believes in exercising presidential power so recklessly, he must never be allowed anywhere near the nation's secrets again.

When Trump's minions bring up Hillary Clinton, keep in mind that "her emails" only became an issue because House Republicans were trying to damage her politically by concocting a scandal from the Benghazi attack. She put that to rest when she testified before the House Benghazi committee for 11 hours, answering every question posed by her adversaries. It was a day of honesty and courage that Donald Trump will never match.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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