Two weeks ago, during an Ohio stop on her “Making America Horny Again” tour, Stormy Daniels was arrested by plainclothes officers. As they wrote in documents filed to the Franklin County Municipal Court, the adult performer was touching clients, which is against the law in the state. Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford and is known nationally for the lawsuits revolving around her alleged tryst with President Donald Trump and the ensuing “hush agreement,” was charged with three violations of “illegal sexually oriented activity in a sexually oriented business.” The charges were dropped less than 12 hours later.

Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs later defended her officers’ right to be in the club, but called the arrest a “mistake,” and announced an investigation behind the “motivation” of the officers. Daniels’s media-savvy lawyer Michael Avenatti demanded that the investigation be “open,” and floated the idea that social-media accounts linked to arresting officers before being deleted were aggressively pro-Trump.

The department’s initial statement on July 12 was that the Vice unit went to the club “as part of a long-term investigation into allegations of human trafficking, prostitution, [and] other vice related violations,” and that they “engage in these operations routinely with no effect on other calls for service.” But purported e-mails obtained by local paper Fayette Advocate suggest a more targeted approach.

Detective Shana Keckley, one of the three arresting officers, allegedly e-mailed herself videos and photos of Daniels a day before the arrest was made, as well as a map to Sirens, the club where Daniels had advertised on her social channels that she would be performing. After the arrest, in the morning of July 12, she allegedly wrote to another officer, “You’re Welcome!!!!! [. . .] Thank me in person later,” but did not refer to Daniels by name.

The Columbus Division of Police told Vanity Fair they can’t comment on the nature of these e-mails due to the ongoing investigation. Avenatti, meanwhile, is claiming vindication, tweeting in response, “This is extremely disturbing. I intend on getting to [the] truth and the bottom of who ordered @StormyDaniels arrested and why. It appears that I was correct when I stated it was politically motivated.”