Two federal courts reviewed the government’s evidence against journalist Don Lemon and declined to approve his arrest last week. But nevertheless, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, persisted, desperate to please her authoritarian boss no matter what the constitution and law say or what her ethical obligations as an attorney require.

Thursday’s arrests of Lemon and Georgia Fort, an independent journalist – like the recent raid on Hannah Natanson, the Washington Post reporter – demonstrate the administration’s lawless crusade against routine journalism. In normal times the expectation is that even when a journalist’s conduct might technically fit the legal elements of a crime – jaywalking to get footage of a protest, for example – prosecutors will exercise their discretion and judgment to not apply the law in a manner that chills the free press.

Those assumptions are inverted now. Even when journalists’ conduct is plainly non-criminal, prosecutors will work overtime to figure out some way to harass them, no matter how frivolous. Discouraging journalists from doing their job is not a side-effect they seek to avoid – it’s the whole point. There is no telling what nonsensical legal theories the administration may advance if it decides to make an example of a reporter it doesn’t like. The law and constitution are only marginally relevant – the only real rule is don’t piss off Trump.

The two federal laws under which Lemon and Fort are reportedly charged are entirely inapplicable. One punishes conspiracies to stop people from exercising constitutional rights. The journalists, of course, didn’t conspire with anyone to do anything nefarious. They simply documented news. It’s ironic that Lemon and Fort are........

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