Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer on Wednesday will deliver a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to open an investigation into the expulsion of Tennessee state House Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson and to determine whether their removals violated the Constitution or federal civil rights law, the Washington Post reports.

Now we’re not lawyers or constitutional experts – and “however” sounds like a good pick for an annoying contrasting conjunction to use here after qualifying our lack of knowledge in this field – however, this obviously nobly intentioned response to an undemocratic abuse of power by a rogue legislature just doesn’t sit quite right and (again, even after admitting we don’t know shit) we have a hard time seeing how it ends with a judge ruling that the Tennessee state House majority violated the civil rights of voters and/or Justins Pearson and Jones barring an extremely narrow and creative case brought by the DOJ. They’re a gerrymandered nuthouse full of fascist criminals and deranged scumbags who were nevertheless duly elected and empowered under the state constitution to run their chamber by the express consent of their voters. The expulsions were both a moral disgrace on top of another moral disgrace and by all appearances a legitimate exercise of sovereign legislative power for which the DOJ better have some really strong fucking evidence was anything otherwise.

If the FBI finds the NRA delivered a crate full of AK-47s to the House speaker and his buddies to get them to push to expel the Jones, Pearson, and Gloria Johnson then by all means they should be prosecuted. Otherwise it’s hard not to see certain similarities to Jim Jordan’s lame attempts to derail Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of disgraced former President Trump.