With apologies, this is a long post for any night, let alone a Saturday, but Trump’s abuse of the power of the prosecutor and efforts to directly control the work of the Justice Department make it essential. In a world that has become a constant barrage of horribles from this president, know that what I’m writing to you about tonight is exceptionally serious and dangerous.

If you’ve been following the news since Friday afternoon, you know that Trump insisted that his own pick to be U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Seibert, be fired. Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I want him out.” His crime? He declined to manufacture evidence to bring charges against Letitia James, the New York Attorney General who successfully went after Trump’s company for fraud and is leading the charge on much of the litigation states’ attorneys general are bringing against the second Trump administration. The office was also reportedly handling an investigation into former FBI Director Jim Comey and declined to prosecute that case as well. By the end of the week, Seibert had resigned, although Trump claimed he’d fired him.

What does “decline to prosecute” mean? It means that for one of a number of reasons, prosecutors who’ve looked at the case don’t think there is sufficient admissible evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction. That’s the standard the Federal Principles of Prosecution require a case to meet before prosecutors can seek an indictment.

Prosecutors can decline to prosecute for reasons such as key evidence being inadmissible (for instance, because it was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on illegal searches and seizure), because a state prosecutor is in a better position to prosecute, or because evidence of a key element of the crime—frequently the required “mens rea” or state of mind (intent, knowledge, etc.) a defendant must have acted with when they committed it—isn’t there. Sometimes declination happens because no crime was committed. We don’t know what the reason(s) were here, but we do know that a team of investigators and prosecutors in an outstanding U.S. Attorney’s Office looked at the evidence and came up empty-handed. It was about the law and the facts, not politics, regardless of what a president who views everything through the lens of his personal popularity claims.

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“Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.” That comment is attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s head of the Soviet secret police. It signifies that regardless of guilt or innocence, political enemies of the state can be targeted to quell opposition. Justice is not the goal. Adam Schiff and Letitia James understand that message, but they continue to choose to defy it. We need to all stand with them in the days and weeks ahead. Protecting the First Amendment and the integrity of the criminal justice system against abuse by the president may we be the two most important challenges we will take on between now and the midterm elections.

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