I have held a security clearance for more than three decades. Depending on the job, it has fluctuated between Secret and Top Secret.

It never, ever has occurred to me to leave a classified document out on my desk, much less take it home. Once one is finished with the document, it is returned to the safe or destroyed. Electronic documents can only be stored on secure servers, accessed by verified personnel, and sent via secure networks.

This isn't obscure or hard-to-discern practice in the government. This is long-established policy.

No one was surprised at the indictment this week of 21-year-old Air National Guard airman first class Jack Teixeira. There will not be a groundswell of protest when Teixeira is tried in federal court, given a bad conduct discharge, and possibly spends decades in prison for first copying, then removing classified documents containing intelligence about the war in Ukraine and then posting them in the Discord chat group.

The interesting element about this case comes from individuals who have given interviews to the press. Teixeira apparently did not post this intelligence for political purposes, or any traditional espionage motives. He posted it instead to look cool to other gamers in his group and show off how in the know and in the thick of things he was.

Does this sound familiar at all?

That is the primary difference in the mishandling of classified information on the part of Donald Trump and other current and former elected officials, most notably Hillary Rodham Clinton. With the exception of Clinton, the other individuals simply mistook classified documents for unclassified documents when cleaning out their offices. This is a problem, for sure, but it is sloppy, not deliberate.

In Clinton's case, she opted to use a private email server for her official Department of State correspondence – some 30,000 emails. This is not okay by any standard. After an extensive review, the Department of Justice opted not to take any further action, stating her intent was benign.

Essentially, DOJ was saying she didn't know it was inappropriate, or that she had classified material in her emails. In other words, she wanted to keep her official email private, which may not be expressly illegal but to me is super shady, and she couldn't tell what was classified or not, which is super incompetent.

Then we come to the freshly arraigned Trump, who, according to the indictment, knowingly took classified materials of strategic importance, moved them around to hide them from search, lied about having them, while bragging about having them and even showing them to party guests.

Airman Teixeira's government career is about to end due to his actions and he may see significant jail time. President Trump should see no different treatment if convicted. As a former Commander-in-Chief, one could argue he should be held to a higher standard.

Although she was not prosecuted, Clinton did see consequences from her mishandling of classified information. She lost the 2016 election. Although it will not come from the hard MAGA base who is unwilling to see the equivalency of Trump's actions to Teixeira's, enough American voters will likely see his indictment as a similar unfitness for office.

Accountability should start at the top.

Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appears regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican, she lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run two head of dog, and two of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.