I made my career as a federal prosecutor putting people who broke the law in jail. Not for a moment do I regret it. The defendants I dealt with were all adults. They knew what they were doing. They knew, or in the exercise of anything approaching normal judgment should have known, that what they were doing was both wrong and against the law. They earned it and they got it. Too bad. Next time behave better.

This brings me to Donald Trump. Yes, I’m late in coming. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump a week ago, and since then a zillion column inches have been written about it, including several thoughtful pieces by Paul, here, here and here. Paul went from being on the whole against prosecuting Trump before the indictment became available to favoring the prosecution after he read it.

You know the charges by now. Unlike Alvin Bragg’s frolic in Manhattan, this is serious stuff, and with the weight of the federal government, and not just one New York borough, behind it.