Newsletter: Opinion: Was Hillary Clinton cleared because she’s an elite?

Good morning. I’m, Paul Thornton,* The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, July 9, 2016. For turning 148 years old today, the 14th Amendment looks pretty good.

Here’s a look back at the week in Opinion.

Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake blew the whistle on government wrongdoing, and they all faced the wrath of law enforcement. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, concocted a scheme to avoid public records laws and misrepresented her behavior while campaigning for president — and she may soon be this country’s commander in chief.

Why? The “context” of her conduct, according to FBI Director James Comey, must be considered in weighing whether to charge her criminally. In other words, Clinton probably got special treatment because she’s a political insider.

That, says Opinion contributing editor Conor Friedersdorf, is a problem:

Only a longstanding member of the establishment like Comey could believe that Clinton's selfish, careerist intent was more excusable, if not more elevated, than Drake, Manning and Snowden’s selfless and self-endangering behavior.

As for “how similar situations have been handled,” it’s true that members of the Washington insider club have, like Clinton, received the kid-glove treatment. Neither Leon Panetta, the former CIA director who revealed state secrets to a Hollywood director, nor John Brennan, who once revealed an undercover counter-terrorism operation during a news conference, nor David Petraeus, who revealed classified information to his mistress, permanently lost their security clearances.

What about ordinary citizens?

“Had someone who was obscure and unimportant and powerless done what Hillary Clinton did,” Glenn Greenwald wrote recently, “recklessly and secretly install a shoddy home server and worked with top secret information on it, then outright lied to the public about it when they were caught — they would have been criminally charged long ago, with little fuss or objection.”

He’s right. Consider Bryan Nishimura, a Navy reservist from Folsom, Calif. While deployed in Afghanistan, he downloaded classified briefings onto personal electronic devices. Later, when FBI agents searched his home, they discovered that he was illegally storing state secrets, but there was no evidence that he intended to distribute them, according to the Associated Press. Nevertheless, he was prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to two years’ probation and a $7,500 fine. “Ordered to surrender his security clearance,” AP reported, “he is barred from seeking a future security clearance.”

The perverse disparities in the treatment of whistle-blowers and low-ranking soldiers, on one hand, and more prominent mishandlers of classified information, on the other, is a perhaps inevitable consequence of two factors: a system of state secrets so over-inclusive that it is routinely violated by well-meaning people with no intention of harming their country; and a high degree of prosecutorial discretion, predictably exercised in a way that protects those with power.

The fact that the political elite and the hoi polloi operate under different rules would be bad enough if it merely led to unfair outcomes in individual cases. These disparities, however, help determine the intelligence that makes its way to the public. Powerful insiders can simultaneously hide damaging information under “top secret” stamps and leak favorable information with impunity. Double standards also undermine confidence in the fairness of what the presumptive Republican nominee has taken to calling a “rigged system.”

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Hillary Clinton is no David Petraeus. The former Army general and widely acknowledged savior of Iraq lost his job as CIA director and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after mishandling classified information that was shared with his mistress and biographer. Clinton’s conservative critics say her misdeeds were substantively the same as Petraeus’; no, they weren’t, writes Melissa Batchelor Warnke. L.A. Times

Comey made the right call — both in recommending against Clinton’s prosecution and in deciding to publicly explain her misdeeds but why they don’t amount to prosecutable offenses, says The Times’ editorial board. “Those who admire Clinton and support her candidacy can hope that this episode has taught her a lesson about the importance of accountability,” the board writes. L.A. Times

Loretta Lynch closes the file on Clinton, but it still doesn’t feel right. The attorney general moved with unusual speed in announcing the Justice Department would follow the FBI’s recommendation, but she should have recused herself completely from the case after meeting with Bill Clinton, says Jon Healey. “Lynch shouldn’t have come within hailing distance of this one,” Healey writes. “Even her limited role gave too much material for critics to work with.” L.A. Times

It’s every urban thinker’s favorite game to play: dystopian L.A. vs. utopian L.A. Batting for idyllic Los Angeles is journalist Alissa Walker with a letter from 2056 that tells of repurposed freeways, hyperloops to Northern California and a train — no, two trains! — to LAX. Up for nightmarish L.A. is comedy writer Adam Gropman, whose dispatch from 40 years hence describes a failed Metro rail system, hellishly long car commutes and entire neighborhoods razed by natural disasters.

Now playing in the veepstakes: Elizabeth Warren and Newt Gingrich. A year ago, columnist Meghan Daum filed a Clinton-Warren ticket under “never gonna happen.” Now, Daum relishes the thought — still far-fetched, she says — that Clinton will “throw down” by running with the liberal Massachusetts senator. On the Republican side, columnist Jonah Goldberg speculates that Gingrich’s job running with Trump could be to “explain why the outlandish isn’t outlandish.”

Sad but true for fans of L.A. sports and politics: We’re getting creamed by Northern California, and NBA great Kevin Durant’s signing with the Bay Area (some call them “Golden State”) Warriors reflects that, writes Bill Whalen. When it comes to gun control, homelessness and the race to succeed Sen. Barbara Boxer, politicians in the northern part of the state are in control. Sacramento Bee

*On a personal note, you might have noticed that my colleague Matthew Fleischer has ably handled newsletter duties the last two weekends. There will probably be more such newsletters over the coming weeks, as I will need to take time off from work that I hadn’t anticipated. Thanks for bearing with us and, as always, for reading.

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com