The Department of Justice publicly searching the home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar recently seems to be a clear violation of the DOJ norm not to take action so close to an election (now just three weeks away) unless absolutely necessary for public safety reasons.

But President Donald Trump’s DOJ under Attorney General Todd Blanche isn’t about norms and only responds to what the president wants. If he wants the Minnesotan Democrat probed for some kind of immigration issue concerning how she came here long ago as a child refugee from Somalia, then apparatchiks and yes-men from Blanche on down will make it happen no matter how ridiculous, the law be damned. And as for waiting until after the election for the raid, ha!

It’s just like the sham White House committee set up last week to investigate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is a joke dressed up as due process in order to satisfy the U.S. Supreme Court, which forbade Trump from firing Cook on a whim. The three handpicked Trump appointees on the Cook panel will examine the absurd small-potatoes (and probably false) claim that Cook made misrepresentations on mortgage applications as a basis to potentially remove her from the central bank.

What differentiates democracies from autocracies is that due process actually means something. In establishing this committee Trump is hoping to build a paper trail and the public appearance of fairness, but the outcome is predetermined and the inquiry itself has no basis. We wish that trio that he named to the commission, like Fed Chair Kevin Warsh refusing to lower interest rates just because Trump said so, understand enough about the potential consequences of this farce to refuse to go along with it.

Trump had better hope for his own sake that his machinations are unsuccessful, given that there is little better way to finish off the U.S. (and consequently, global) economy than to definitively interfere with the Fed’s independence, as he has been trying to do all along.

Ever the unsophisticated thinker, Trump believes that replacing Cook and forcing Warsh to lower short-term interest rates will help his popularity as it craters ahead of the midterms. He has no capacity to understand that the repercussions will be much further-reaching than a temporary rate dip; the markets will respond instantly and aggressively and international confidence in the American economic system — a bedrock of global commerce since the end of World War II — will sink, likely sending the dollar tumbling and Treasury debt service skyrocketing.

The reported attempted prosecution of Cassidy Hutchinson— the former Trump White House aide who testified extensively about events leading up to and during Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection — on the farfetched idea of perjury to Congress won’t unleash the same kinds of catastrophic economic consequences, but it is no less damaging in fundamental and long-term ways to our democracy.

She would join a line of real or perceived political enemies that Trump has directed be charged or investigated for whatever crimes his prosecutors think they could potentially pin on them. He has perverted the base principle of our justice system: guilt comes first in Trump’s view, whether the facts back it up or not.

Omar, Cook and Hutchinson follow Trump efforts to nail Tish James and Jim Comey. That those attempts have been unsuccessful does not make them OK. Each one is a sign to the public, including people with far less power and abilities to defend themselves than these high-level officials — like Kilmar Abrego Garcia — they had better stay out of the administration’s way.

This is corrosive to a society not only in what it does to the ability of government to function properly, but sapping the public’s confidence in the underlying principles of our rules-based system. The societies where people believe nothing matters and the ruling elites do what they want are not those you want to live in. These efforts must not only stop, Trump and his cronies must be held accountable.

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