This week the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the woman who beat the Grifter-in-Chief twice in a court of law.

Let’s be precise about what that means. A jury of his peers — Americans, presumably some of whom voted for him (juries drawn from the entire Southern District of NY which includes counties that are deep red) — found that this man sexually abused her. Another jury, in separate proceedings, awarded her $83 million in damages for the defamation she suffered when he opened his mouth, as he always does, to make himself the victim.  His high-priced legal cavalry charged the hill and lost. Appeals went nowhere. He is 0-4. The courts, functioning as designed, said: guilty.

Now prosecutors are examining whether Carroll committed perjury when, in a 2022 deposition, she said no one else was paying her legal fees — a question that arose after it was revealed a nonprofit connected to billionaire Reid Hoffman had covered some of her costs. (The irony here is the Abuser-in-Chief’s legal bills were handled by donors, not him.) But that’s his excuse and he is sticking to it. This is the fig leaf. The Emperor of Mar-a-Lago doesn’t need a good reason — he just needs a reason, any reason, a reason thin enough to fit under a courtroom door to muddy the water, and keep him from taking responsibility for his own despicable behavior.

The Carroll probe joins Donnie’s “Revenge of the Turd Tour” that includes multiple attempts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Comey was indicted on charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstruction. A judge eventually dismissed those cases, scolding the Justice Department for a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” and potential prosecutorial misconduct. Letitia James, who had the audacity to sue the Debt-Ridden Don and win, was indicted, re-investigated, dismissed, and indicted again. Two federal grand juries and a federal judge threw out the charges, yet the department reportedly pressed on.

Grand juries, to be clear, indict ham sandwiches. When even a grand jury looks at your case and says no, you have not merely lost — you have achieved something special. You have assembled a prosecution so bereft of merit that citizens, average citizens dragged in off the street, looked at it and said: we won’t put our names on this.

This is about the oldest impulse in the authoritarian playbook: using the machinery of the state to punish your enemies, reward your loyalists, and remind everyone else what happens when they get in your way. Where the attorney general’s job title should technically read: Personal Counsel to the Grievance.

Calling it a “revenge tour,” undersells the structural problem. Revenge is personal. What’s happening here is institutional. The Justice Department — an agency founded on the radical notion that no person is above the law — has been converted, in the span of a few months, into a billing department for scores that needed settling. Carroll. Comey. James. Others in the queue. The Southern Poverty Law Center. Democratic lawmakers. The list has the rhythm of a grudge list, not a docket.

And lest we focus only on what the Justice Department is doing to his enemies, let’s spare a moment for what it’s doing for his friends. Earlier this month, the department announced a $1.776 billion fund — drawn directly from public coffers — to compensate Trump loyalists deemed victims of “weaponization.” The money flows through a commission appointed by his own attorney general, with recipient names and payout amounts deliberately hidden from public view. No specific recipients named yet, but the intended audience is obvious: the January 6th rioters, most of whom the Pardoner-in-Chief had already sprung on day one. Capitol Police officers who were beaten during the assault have filed suit. The Treasury Department’s own top lawyer resigned in protest. The lawsuit that generated this windfall — a $10 billion action filed by Trump against his own IRS — was filed months past the statute of limitations and described by the IRS’s own lawyers as one that should have been tossed immediately.

To recap: prosecute the woman who beat him in court, cut checks to the mob that stormed the Capitol for him. Punishment for enemies, payday for loyalists. The two-tiered justice system, now with a budget line.

This is how banana republics are created. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just: a bureaucracy pointed at enemies instead of criminals.

The Tangerine Tyrant has done us the unintentional favor of clarifying something important. Our republic was founded on the concept that those we elect were men of good will and strong character. Our founders did not anticipate us electing a convicted felon who thinks morals are a type of mushroom. He has taught us rules don’t protect us. Laws do.

For decades, the independence of the Justice Department from direct presidential control rested on norms, traditions, and a gentleman’s agreement that presidents would behave like presidents and not like mob bosses with nuclear codes. The Norm-Shredder taught us that norms are tissue paper. He taught us that a determined bad actor can do extraordinary damage before anyone finds a statute to stop him.

We need laws. Not rules.  Here are a few places to start:

Prohibit direct presidential communication with DOJ prosecutors on specific cases. Right now, nothing formally stops a president from calling his attorney general and saying “I want that woman investigated.” There is a memo. There are norms. Memos are not laws. Norms are for people who respect them. A statute criminalizing direct presidential interference in specific prosecutorial decisions would do what the memo cannot: create consequences.

Require Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys to sign off on any investigation of a political opponent, former adversary, or litigation counterparty of the president. The cases against Carroll, Comey, and James all originated in circumstances where the subjects had direct, documented legal or political conflict with the man in the Oval Office. That conflict of interest should trigger mandatory independent review before a single subpoena gets issued.

Create an office of Special Prosecutor with independent standing to challenge retaliatory prosecutions in federal court. Right now, the accused must mount that defense themselves, at enormous personal and financial cost. The Grifter-in-Chief is betting that the process is the punishment — that even failed prosecutions drain the targets of money, time, and dignity. An independent watchdog with the power to intervene early changes that calculus.

Mandate disclosure when the president or his staff communicates with DOJ about an ongoing matter. Sunlight is still the best disinfectant. If the Acting Attorney General gets a call from the West Wing about E. Jean Carroll, America should know about it — not in a leak, but in a filing.

None of this is complicated. None of it is radical. All of it is, compared to what we’ve tolerated, embarrassingly overdue.

The courts have been doing their job — throwing out indictments, scolding prosecutors, upholding jury verdicts. But the courts are downstream and increasingly MAGA stacked. By the time a case reaches them, the damage is done. Carroll is 82 years old and being dragged back into the legal system by the man a jury found had assaulted her. Letitia James has been indicted twice for what amounts to the crime of doing her job well. Comey spent a year as a criminal defendant before a judge ended it.

What protects the next Carroll? The next Comey? Us?

Not rules. Not norms. Not the good intentions of whoever happens to be sitting in the big chair.

Laws. Passed by Congress, signed into statute, enforceable in court. The only things that hold when the man at the top decides the rules don’t apply to him.

As Maya Angelou warned “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

My codicil to her advice would be: “And then do something about it.”