I spend my professional life around fiduciaries. When a trustee breaches duty, when an investment manager crosses a line, there’s a process. Regulators investigate. Courts rule. People lose licenses, pay fines, sometimes do time. That’s not idealism. That’s how the system is supposed to work when someone entrusted with power abuses it.

Compare that to what Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) just disclosed about special counsel Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation. According to records released by the two senators, Smith’s team obtained and reviewed text messages from 44 sitting and former members of Congress as part of the Biden Justice Department’s criminal inquiry of President Donald Trump, and it did so by bypassing the Filter Team process built specifically to keep investigators away from privileged material. Republicans and Democrats both got swept up. Grassley and Johnson’s own messages were among them.