We learned last week that Attorney General William Barr encouraged Justice Department prosecutors to consider sedition charges against anti-racist protestors who commit violence — a clear attempt to ratchet up the Trump administration’s campaign not only to portray, but to treat, civil rights protestors as enemies of the United States. But equally horrifying are the reports that the attorney general also directed Justice Department officials to explores such charges against elected officials in cities like Seattle and Portland where such protests have taken place, on grounds that they did not take sufficient actions against demonstrators. Barr appears to have been particularly interested in punishing Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing the existence of a protest zone free of police in the Capitol Hill area of the city; the reporting on Portland has not identified which particular officials were in the administration’s crosshairs, though President Trump has repeatedly pursued a verbal vendetta against Mayor Ted Wheeler.

Any prosecutions of politicians on such grounds need to be described as exactly what they are: the corrupt use of the Justice Department to criminalize political opponents of the president for purely partisan ends. There really is no way to overstate how shocking such Justice Department discussions are, or how great a perversion of democratic government they represent. That the government has to date not proceeded with such corrupt prosecutions of elected Democrats is cold comfort. This is a preview of the authoritarian nightmare that would be unleashed in a second Trump administration, where Democrats would be prosecuted as criminals if they disagree with the president on policy. Once again, we see that Trump and Barr’s talk of law and order is just the opposite: a desire to pervert the law, and American government, into a weapon to use against political opponents.

The fact that multiple Justice Department employees were willing to talk to reporters about these discussions is a small silver lining, but opens the door to a related issue: the need for the Trump administration to receive the assistance of many, many lower-ranking federal officials and employees in the implementation of openly corrupt policies. In the case of criminalizing elected officials for their political choices, there is no conceivable definition of legal ethics that should not result in the disbarring of any Justice Department lawyers who were to participate in such cases. Those enabling the Trump administration in this and other acts of lawlessness and authoritarianism need to fear the professional consequences of their complicity in anti-democratic acts.

William Barr in particular is no longer hiding his true inclinations or goals. The free press is the enemy; protestors are the enemy; and now, apparently, elected Democrats are the enemy. His ideas and his language are from the far-right fringes of American politics; there is no need for officials who serve the American people and the constitution to follow him down this openly authoritarian path.