There is nothing wrong with our government’s requesting the assistance of foreign governments that have access to witnesses and evidence relevant to an ongoing Justice Department investigation. The president is the democratically elected, constitutionally empowered chief executive: There is nothing his subordinates may properly do that he may not do himself (it is his power that they exercise). And the president is never conflicted out of executive branch business due to his political interests. There is no legal or ethical requirement that the Justice Department be denied potentially probative evidence because obtaining it might affect the president’s political fortunes…

Don’t get me wrong: I am not rooting for Joe Biden or his son to be subjected to investigation and prosecution. I agree with Attorney General Barr that there has been too much politicization of law enforcement and intelligence. In the absence of a concrete, patent, and serious violation of the criminal law, I want the Justice Department and the FBI out of politics – which would be better for them and for politics. If you think there is an indecorous heavy-handedness to the way Donald Trump and Joe Biden conduct foreign policy, that’s fine – go vote against them on Election Day. We don’t need creative prosecutors deciding elections by testing the boundaries of abstruse statutes.

Neither, however, do I believe in unilateral disarmament. There is at least as much basis for opening an FCPA investigation against the Bidens as for opening campaign-finance investigations against the Trumps. If I had my druthers, all of this nonsense would end. But as I detailed earlier this week, we have one candidate for the presidency — a once-serious legal scholar and practitioner — who publicly and straight-faced says Trump’s call with Zelensky could rate the death penalty. As we saw in the late 1990s, when Bill Clinton got to experience the independent-counsel statute up close and personal, maybe it takes Democrats being hoisted on their own petard before we finally say: This has to stop.