1. With Clinton, the question was: Did her reasons for setting up the private email server demonstrate her intent? With Trump, we’re still learning a lot. But there appears to be plenty of evidence to suggest that his intent was to keep these documents, even when the alleged mishandling was flagged to him.
Indeed, it’s becoming clear that Trump’s obstinance played a role in why he was searched. Whether that search was justified or not, it’s not really analogous to Clinton.
2. With Clinton, Comey said 113 emails were found to have contained classified information, including eight email chains that had information marked top secret at the time they were sent. (Many didn’t include classification markings at the time because they were not official government documents.)
With Trump, we still don’t know the full extent of what he took to Mar-a-Lago. But the search warrant affidavit released last week said that Trump in January voluntarily returned 184 classified documents, including 25 that were marked top secret. The search earlier this month turned up 11 more sets of classified documents, including several that were top secret.
We don’t have the final numbers — the New York Times last week put the total number of classified documents at more than 300 — but the government has retrieved more classified and top-secret documents from him than from Clinton.
3. There is no evidence that Clinton sought to obscure the information out of disloyalty to her country. … With Trump, the evidence on this front is very incomplete — and “disloyalty to the United States” is a very high bar. We do know that there was urgency to retrieve the documents for some reason, but despite plenty of speculation, we don’t know why that was.
4. This is likely to be the crucial difference, possibly alongside No. 1, if Trump is ever charged.
As mentioned earlier, Trump resisted returning these documents. …. And the government cited the likelihood that it would find evidence of obstruction to obtain the search warrant. Precisely what the government believes might rise to the level of obstruction, we’ll have to see.
As for Clinton, she testified to Congress about her private email server as part of the Benghazi hearings. She sat with the FBI in a voluntary interview for more than three hours. She also turned over tens of thousands of emails.