Ellsberg and Trump both took classified documents. Their reasons couldn’t be more different | Rebecca Solnit

A great truth teller has left us. A liar whose mendacity has no equal remains for us to deal with

On Friday, a man who leaked classified national security documents to the press died at the age of 92 at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. On Tuesday, a man who took classified documents to his Miami home that was also a resort frequented by a wide array of characters, refused to surrender them, and unleashed a flock of lies about the whole business, was arraigned on 37 felony charges.

We know that Daniel Ellsberg leaked documents in the hopes of stopping a war, preventing deaths, and exposing a government that had through five presidencies lied about that war in Vietnam to justify and perpetuate it. We don't know exactly why Donald J Trump absconded from the White House with top secret material. But there are no good explanations for those boxes stacked on the stage, in the bathroom and spilling on to the floor of a storeroom, and dragged back to another insecure location at Trump's country club in New Jersey, or for his refusal to surrender the material when the government demanded it.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell's Roses