Last week, I gave a talk to American University law students about the dangerous waters our country is entering by having hyper-partisan prosecutors from the party in office use their power to pursue aggressive criminal charges against the candidate of the opposing party in an election year. The talk I gave is similar to the one linked in my last post.

In the question-and-answer period afterwards, a young lady raised her hand. She said she was from Colombia, and that the Trump prosecutions now ongoing are a more poisonous form of banana republic politics than she had ever experienced where she grew up.

Although I think there is merit to one of the Trump prosecutions — the Florida-based charge for obstruction of justice and evading a lawful subpoena — I had to agree. And readers may note that, while we’ll all now be hearing oodles about “hush money” and “porn star,” the one thing we’ll almost never be hearing is the phrase “banana republic politics.” But that’s what’s going on, and it presents massively more of a threat to an honorable judicial system and to the rule of law itself than any porn star and any hush money the world has ever seen.

One of the things I noted in the question-and-answer period at American is that, while we (and conservatives in particular) like to say that our system is about the rule of law and not of men, that’s not actually true. Having been a litigating lawyer most of professional life, I’ve learned that the character, fair-mindedness and integrity of the people running the system will either build it or kill it.