Justice is coming.

After RFK cashes in on kratom.

I promise there is a positive takeaway from this message. First, a memory: I worked as an intern in a federal prosecutor’s office, and I always found it funny that the break room had the above poster from Tombstone, presumably because of the tagline. It was motivating for those of us who believed justice really was coming. This was during the Bush administration, but there was truly no way to tell whether a Democrat or Republican was in charge at the ground level. The work spoke for itself.

I think we all know that’s not true today. Consider what has been revealed about the DOJ in the stunning investigation from today’s New York Times showing how RFK Jr. received $1 million dollars from a company selling kratom, an opioid-like drug available in gas stations. WHY IS A CABINET SECRETARY ALLOWED TO ACCEPT ONE MILLION DOLLARS FROM ANYONE, FOR ANY REASON, I want to scream from the rooftops. (The article says it went to his PAC, but still. Why does he have a PAC?). Especially when the company’s CEO did prison time for fraud!

Needless to say, the DOJ is not investigating Kennedy, even though the article documents how he got the money after pressuring the governor of Ohio to drop a proposed kratom ban. In fact, DOJ somehow saw the issue the same way and dropped its own investigation into the safety of this company’s kratom. And the cherry on top is that an investor in the company is none other than Secretary Markwayne Mullin, whose stake may be as much as $1 million. Obviously he stands to benefit, and the article discusses how he used his own influence accordingly.

I suppose someone could ask, do million-dollar instances of corruption even warrant federal resources in a world where the Trump family’s corruption is so far into the billions? Of course they do. Kratom has been associated with a wave of deaths. I’ve sat with families who lost people to drugs. It matters immensely if our public officials are being paid to allow drug distribution on a larger and even more unsafe scale.

Here is the positive side that I promised: there truly is something we can do about this. But the next Democratic administration will have to innovate. The approach of appointing a single, eminent prosecutor to deal with all of this corruption will not work, in part because the supposedly-eminent often can’t or won’t communicate with the public, and probably also because our society doesn’t agree much on eminence anymore.

The new approach will have to be analogous to what the Marines call a “combined arms” exercise. State-level prosecutions and private civil litigation will become critical avenues if Trump issues blanket pardons, since those could complicate federal prosecutions. And don’t forget that a Democratic House majority from 2027-2029 can probably develop evidence before any future criminal investigation would begin. The administration will stonewall them, of course, but banks and communications companies, and witnesses who are out of government, may not be able to withhold their evidence as easily. That’s an important head start.

So if you find yourself questioning whether retaking the House majority actually matters against corruption of this scale, take it from me that the answer is yes. It’s not the whole ballgame, but it’s a vital and practical first step. After that, many of us will have to work together across multiple fronts for many years. But what choice is there? Our form of government rests on people believing, to some degree, that their vote makes a difference. Corruption is uniquely capable of destroying that.

Here in Pennsylvania, there are at least four congressional seats that we believe can be flipped, based on our excellent candidates and the dynamics shaping up this year. You can take action right now to support all four of these candidates:

• Bob Harvie

• Paige Cognetti

• Janelle Stelson

• Bob Brooks

Justice is coming!