https://newrepublic.com/article/206671/trump-six-democrats-prosecution-backfires

«Yet details of how this indictment came together should caution us against letting Trump and Pirro’s pie-in-the-face antics distract from how grave an abuse of power this truly was—and continues to be.

Here’s what happened: After the FBI communicated with the Democratic lawmakers, prosecutors in Pirro’s office reached out to them to follow up. Slotkin’s attorney, Preet Bharara, directly asked prosecutors what statute the Democrats had allegedly violated to prompt the criminal inquiry, according to sources familiar with these discussions. The prosecutors could not name any statute, the sources told me.

“What is the theory of criminal liability?” is the question that was posed to the prosecutors, one source said, adding that “no answer was forthcoming.”

And so, when the news broke that Pirro had tried—and failed—to secure an indictment, this was particularly shocking to the lawyers, the sources said. That’s because her prosecutors had failed to name any violated statute, yet they forged ahead with the effort to indict anyway. It has not been definitively confirmed what statute they used in that failed effort.»

…

«Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Pirro brought in two outsiders to prosecute the case against the Democrats, one of whom is a dance photographer who worked for Pirro decades ago. Together they have very little Justice Department experience, suggesting they may have been tapped to carry out cases that career prosecutors might be reluctant to attempt—special projects, as it were, for the benefit of the Audience of One.»

“The Audience of One.” I like that.

…

«Yet the stakes here remain extraordinarily high. Anyone targeted in this way must sink enormous time and money into self-defense. This threatens to stifle dissent among lawmakers, institutions and prominent individual critics who might muzzle themselves rather than face investigation and potential prosecution. Indeed, it probably already has.

It’s easy to get seduced by the Keystone Kops vibe to all this. But these Keystone Kops continue to wield the enormous power of the federal criminal justice bureaucracy, and they have tethered it to the chaotic whims of a Mad King who thinks that being a Democrat who criticizes him is a prosecutable crime. That they’ve failed so far is heartening. But all indications are that Trump will continue demanding these prosecutions until one of them succeeds—or, possibly, until many more than one does.»

To say nothing of all the manipulators behind the clown show.