Two weeks ago, Stormy Daniels, a working mother who allegedly had sex with a white supremacist, was arrested at an Ohio strip club after performing her routine.

The bust looked fake from the start.

Daniels was arrested under Ohio’s Community Defense Act. Cops claim that they were at her performance for legitimate reasons not related to her performance, but during her act she touched a customer which is a violation of this code.

Daniels’s attorney, Michel Avenatti immediately called the arrest a set-up. I immediately called the arrest a set-up. Anybody who has ever been to a strip club could see that the arrest was a set-up. Now, a whistleblower seems to confirm that the arrest was a set-up. From Vice News:

But emails given to the Fayette Advocate by a police department whistleblower suggest that officers targeted Daniels for arrest. In the days before the arrest, one detective reportedly sent several emails to herself containing photos about Daniels and information about her upcoming appearance at the club. Then, shortly after the arrest, the detective sent out another email that read, “I got elements … we arrested Stormy this morning, she is in jail.” (Prosecutors need a certain burden of evidence, or “elements,” in order to pursue a case.) Another email obtained by the Advocate has the subject line “Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels complaints and others.” While the body text purportedly doesn’t mention Daniels by name, it reads, “You’re Welcome!!!!! I work Vice now !! [ sic].” After tossing in a couple smiley faces, the detective added, “Thank me in person later.”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve learned that there are two main arguments against viewing Stormy Daniels as a victim of #MAGA forces.

1. OMG, I’ve seen her boobies. We don’t have to treat her like a person.

2. She took the money! Now she’s talking and must be punished.

The first argument represents nothing less than the tyranny of evil men. Men generally, and MAGA men especially, have very strict rules for the kind of conduct required of a woman who expects to be treated as something approaching a human person. Should a woman stray too far from those codes of conduct, men get it into their heads that it’s somehow okay to treat them as objects. Woe betide the woman who objectifies herself, even in a fantasy setting, for her own profit. Once that happens a lot of men seem to feel righteously justified in denying that woman personhood in any other aspect of her life.

And yet somehow the second argument pisses me off more. At least our society’s fapping dehumanization of sex workers is a known issue. At least I can appreciate that going from treating somebody like an object to a treating them like a person can be a hard transition. I mean, every cold Sunday I root for somebody to hit Tom Brady so hard that he can’t remember how many Uggs he owns. I’d probably have to personally see him, writhing in pain as his personal trainer forced him to drink gallons of water like it was the Drink of Despair, before I remembered “Oh, damn, there’s a real person under that helmet.”

But the argument that somehow Stormy Daniels deserves every bad thing that happens to her because she violated a non-disclosure agreement about her own damn sex life is just freaking insane. First of all, I think we all should know by now that sexual NDAs cause way more harm than good. Secondly, she only started talking because Donald Trump started LYING about their relationship. “I agree to hush up” is one thing. “I agree to hush up… so you can use the Office of the President of the United States of America to call me a lair” is quite a different thing, one that she most definitely did NOT think she was signing.

And lastly, even if she did violate some kind of sacred, ironclad, contractual obligation to let the President lie about her, we have a legal remedy and penalty for that. We have CONTRACT LAW to handle that.

What we don’t have, what we can’t have, is local freaking cops taking matters “into their own hands” and entrapping her at her place of business. THAT’S NOT A VALID PENALTY for the “sin” of violating an NDA. The goon squad is never an appropriate punishment.

Every single cop involved in the set-up needs to be kicked off the force. What they did was wrong, morally, ethically, and legally. What they did was an attack on the rule of law. They attempted to terrorize this woman.

I’ll say again, what we’re doing, as a society, to Stormy Daniels is wrong.

It really looks like Stormy Daniels’ strip club arrest was a set-up [VICE News]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.