The criminal indictment against former FBI director James Comey will be parsed on the law, the facts, and the question of whether the Trump administration’s decision to indict a person on Donald Trump’s enemies’ list in the first place amounted to a vindictive and selective prosecution. All of those analyses have their place, and Comey has already indicated that he has “great confidence in the federal judicial system” such that he is willing to proceed with a public trial to clear his name.

Yet the reason he finds himself in the president’s crosshairs, apart from the subservience of a newly appointed U.S. attorney in Virginia with no experience in criminal law, and an attorney general who can’t even bring herself to refer to Comey by name on the day of his indictment, can be traced to the federal judicial system itself. It is the Supreme Court of the United States, led by a chief justice who has done more than most to empower a presidency unbound by law, that is responsible for giving Trump the unlimited freedom to lean on the Justice Department to prosecute anyone he wants, even when the only evidence to predicate those investigations and prosecutions is the president’s feelings and not much else.

Yesterday was James Comey’s turn. Tomorrow may be Letitia James. Kilmar Ábrego García, though not formally a public enemy of the president, is now the subject of a political prosecution where the White House, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security are all acting in concert to demonize, criminalize, and ultimately deport him to a country not his own.

In all of these cases, sooner or later, the Trump administration can be expected to seek refuge in the work of

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