Hillary’s perp walk will be the greatest moment of live TV since the moon landing. The only question: Are we rooting for it to happen before the Democratic convention, for maximum embarrassment, or after?

No, no, I kid. Elite members of our political class are obviously above the law, no matter how crooked they are.

As pressure builds on Hillary Clinton to explain her official use of personal email while serving as secretary of state, she faced new complications Tuesday. It was disclosed her top aides are being drawn into a burgeoning federal inquiry and that two emails on her private account have been classified as “Top Secret.” The inspector general for the Intelligence Community notified senior members of Congress that two of four classified emails discovered on the server Clinton maintained at her New York home contained material deemed to be in one of the highest security classifications – more sensitive than previously known… Despite the acknowledgment, the State Department inspector general’s office has left numerous unanswered questions, including exactly who and what is being investigated. The office initially declined to comment and referred questions to the Intelligence Community inspector general’s office, which said it is not currently involved in any inquiry into aides and is being denied full access to aides’ emails by the State Department. Clinton, herself, is not a target.

McClatchy’s looser with its language there than I’d prefer given the stakes. I think they mean that “top secret” messages were found on the server, which hosted not just Hillary’s private e-mail account but accounts used by some of her top cronies, including Huma Abedin. Finding a “top secret” e-mail in Hillary’s own account would be more damning than finding it elsewhere on the server since it would mean she was knowingly trafficking in top-secret info. If the messages are in Abedin’s account, Clinton can claim, implausibly or not, that she had no idea the server was being used for such things and that Huma’s the one to blame for the breach, not her. That would be a preposterous defense given that they weren’t supposed to be using a private e-mail server to begin with and that Hillary, by setting one up and encouraging her lackeys to use it, knew the risk that classified info would end up there in the course of official correspondence, but that’s the defense that’ll be used. The staffer with the account will take the fall and Clinton, who wants to be trusted with national security after taking secret State Department business off the federal grid and onto her own rinky dink private network, will plead “disappointment” in her underling and vow to do better in the future. And no voter will bat an eye when she gets a wrist slap because that’s just how things work and everyone knows it. If you polled the public right now and asked how many expected Hillary to receive any criminal penalty whatsoever for her recklessness in insisting on a private server, how many would say yes? Maybe 20 percent, the most hopelessly idealistic suckers in the electorate? If you’re looking for an illustration of Trump’s eff-it-all appeal, there’s one.

Besides, why punish Hillary when the Chinese have been reading the private e-mails of “many” top Obama officials for the last five years? There’s another potential excuse for her: She’s no more negligent than any other top bureaucrat who foolishly chose to use private e-mail platforms. Singling her out for special scrutiny is just the vast right-wing conspiracy at work again. Don’t you feel bad that you’re putting her through this?

Update: If there’s a smoking gun somewhere, the feds should have it now.