Once again the Clintons have gamed the system and escaped punishment for obvious criminal activity, so obvious that FBI Director James Comey had to acknowledge and list it even as he whistled past the obvious consequence -- prosecution. Through Whitewater, Monica Lewinsly, Travelgate, and assorted scandals they have skated, going from parsing the meaning of the word “is” to the meaning of the word “classified”.

Director Comey did some parsing of his own, rewriting the statutes Hillary clearly violated, making a distinction without a difference between the “extreme carelessness” of Hillary Clinton, which he said was not prosecutable, to the “gross negligence” of Gen. David Petraeus, who was punished as the relevant statute clearly requires.

Gen. David Petraeus was prosecuted and convicted of merely mishandling classified material, having it in his house to aid a biographer writing a book. The material never made the book and was returned. It was never exposed to hackers, which Comey confirmed, or was made available to blackmail a future president. Hillary exposed classified material to foreign hackers and governments on an unsecured server. As Investor’s Business Daily observed:

Scandal: Which is worse -- keeping classified information in a personal journal at home or doing government business and transmitting classified data on a private email account managed from the Clinton family home?

This adds a new level of premeditated secrecy and deceit to the actions of the presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

It also adds a new level of hypocrisy to the most transparent administration in history’s pursuit of former CIA Director and commander of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus.

Petraeus, who had an extramarital affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, pleaded guilty, after a lengthy government investigation, to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information.

Petraeus had kept in his home a set of eight “Black Books” containing his notes and observations about his experiences, as well as classified information including conversations he had with the president, diplomats, and national security officers. Petraeus provided Broadwell access to these documents but, as far as we know, the information went no further.

What Hillary did and got away with, the mishandling of classified material to intentionally avoid political embarrassment occurred at least once before, at the hands of notorious Clinton crony Sandy Berger, who put classified information in another type of drawers – his own -- to help the Clintons dodge the truth and the responsibility for their actions.

A report released in 2006 by National Archives inspector general Paul Brachfield on Wednesday that concluded Berger in 2004 “knowingly removed classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration and stored and retained such documents at places,” including temporarily under a construction trailer outside the main Archives building.

This seems to blatantly contradict the feeble mea culpa Berger issued when in the summer of 2004 he was caught stuffing and removing said documents in his clothing, documents that directly contradicted his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. 

Back then Berger said, “I made an honest mistake,” a mistake which included, according to his plea bargain which netted him no jail time and a meager fine, taking five classified documents, using a scissors on three of them, then lying to the National Archives when asked about them.

“Honest” is not the word we would ascribe to his “mistake” and the report from the Archives IG shows just how dishonest, and criminal, his actions were. Brachfield reported that on one visit, Berger took a break to go outside without an escort, noting, “in total during this visit, he removed four documents….”

According to the report, “Mr. Berger said he placed these documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main Archives building). Berger admitted that he later retrieved the documents from under the trailer and returned to his office.

So what was in those documents that he would risk his career and his freedom in what amounts to, dare we say it, a third-rate burglary? One of them, the Millennium After-Action Review and written by Bush critic Richard Clarke dealt with the Clinton administration’s handling of terror threats including the plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999.

Berger, who stole with the intention of destroying national security documents in order to lie to Congress and deceive the American people, was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, pay a $50,000 fine, serve 100 hours of community service, and barred from access to similar documents for three years.

What Hillary Clinton did was a little more high-tech but not very different from Sandy Berger stuffing documents in his drawers. He was punished as was Bill Clinton for lying under oath. As CNSNews reported:

On Clinton's last full day as president, Jan. 19, 2001, he agreed to a five-year license suspension. The agreement came on the condition that Whitewater prosecutors would not pursue criminal charges against him after he lied under oath about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton accepted the penalty under a deal with Special Prosecutor Robert Ray, a successor to Kenneth W. Starr. The panel voted to disbar Clinton for five years and impose a $250,000 fine. Clinton has paid the fine.

Why should Hillary Clinton, as much of a liar and deceiver as her husband and his national security adviser, and as guilty of mishandling national secrets as David Petraeus, escape punishment? At the very least Hillary Clinton should be stripped of her national security clearance, at least as a candidate. Is this the person we want to trust with the nuclear codes as president? Are we a nation of laws or a nation of double standards, with one set of laws for the Clintons, and another set for the “little people”?

Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.