“Lock her up!”

The anti-Clinton chant made famous by Donald Trump’s campaign against “Crooked Hillary” is finding an echo in Ontario. And the FBI’s Keystone Kops tactics — marked by innuendo and interference during the U.S. presidential election — are resonating here at home.

Is the OPP taking lessons in bad timing from the FBI — and the RCMP — by laying charges in the middle of two byelection campaigns this month?

Will Premier Kathleen Wynne face taunts of “Crooked Kathleen” as the Ontario Provincial Police and the opposition parties ratchet up the pressure on her Liberals?

Fresh bribery charges in connection with a 22-month-old byelection campaign in Sudbury will further blur the line between criminal and political in the public mind — not unlike America’s increasingly hyped, hypocritical and hysterical reality theatre.

So is Sudburygate worse than Watergate? Is this the scandal that breaks the Liberals’ back?

So many accusations, so few answers. We won’t have a verdict until the trial — if it isn’t thrown out first — but here are six questions to ponder until then:

Why did the OPP lay — and then stay — criminal charges of influence peddling against Liberal bagman Gerry Lougheed 13 months ago, only to set them aside last April after realizing they had little prospect of conviction? Given that the allegations date to November 2014, could the cops not sort it out before going public?

Why did police wait nearly two years from the time of the alleged infractions to lay charges this week under the Elections Act (provincial offences, not Criminal Code) against Lougheed and Sorbara? After all this time — and summertime — why go public this week in the middle of the byelections?

After Andrew Olivier lost a longtime Liberal stronghold in Sudbury in the 2014 general election, the premier concluded he couldn’t win the February 2015 byelection. So if Wynne signalled she wouldn’t sign his nomination papers, why are police persuaded that her aide, Sorbara, needed to bribe him not to run as a Liberal (he was always free to run as an independent — which he did, placing third)? Worried about seeming heartless with a quadriplegic, Liberals asked him to part quietly by inviting him to seek other political posts — unpaid volunteer positions in the party, or low-paying jobs such as part-time constituency assistant. Olivier is relatively affluent, so it wasn’t about the money — the bribery allegation is laughable — just the wounded pride of a partisan scorned. But because it was caught on tape — Olivier records phone calls because he can’t take notes — it all sounds awfully awkward and messy, like a bad breakup. That’s politics, but when does a consolation call become bribery — given that he was already ruled out as a candidate?

Will the OPP look into the case of Garfield Dunlop, who resigned his Simcoe riding last year to make way for the seatless PC Leader, Patrick Brown — in return for being placed on the party payroll? Inducement or coincidence? Will the police investigate how Laurie Scott stepped aside for former PC leader John Tory in 2009 — and, yep, got a paid party job? Will the OPP probe NDP Leader Andrea Horwath for suddenly making MPP Jagmeet Singh her deputy leader last year to dissuade him from running federally? Quid pro quo or coincidence? What about the signed letter from Brown during a recent Scarborough byelection promising to “scrap” the sex-ed curriculum — delivered to a rival independent social conservative candidate mere hours before the deadline for her to withdraw from the race? Was that a “consideration” drafted and crafted to induce her not to run against the Tories?

The OPP’s case rises from merely risible to miserable with the second charge against Sorbara: that she allegedly bribed former New Democrat MP Glenn Thibeault to quit federal politics and run provincially for the Liberals by dangling a cabinet seat. So why haven’t they charged Thibeault with taking a bribe, given that he was appointed energy minister last summer, a full 18 months after winning his seat? Did the OPP forget to factor in Thibeault’s ambition — of his own volition — to serve in government rather than languish in opposition? By their twisted logic, will the police now investigate ex-Tory Belinda Stronach for crossing over to the Liberals in 2005 to immediately join cabinet? Or ex-Liberal David Emerson for switching to Stephen Harper’s Conservative cabinet in 2006?

It’s easy to confuse democracy with criminality, and to conflate take-no-prisoners campaigning with bribery and skulduggery. But any informed reading of the Elections Act makes it clear that it was written to guard against influence peddlers trying to pervert the course of democracy by buying off corrupt politicians, not political operators trying to recruit winning talent to their team (while ridding themselves of losers).

Politics is a blood sport, and this isn’t about excusing it, merely contextualizing it. But the police and Crown prosecutors have parsed the regulations in an unprecedented way to weaponize the Elections Act.

While it’s often said the police answer to no one, they certainly answered the call from PC and NDP backbenchers demanding probes of Liberal conduct. It’s rather like fundraising — all parties do it, but only the opposition claims it has clean hands, rousing our plodding police against plotting politicians.

Now, the public is increasingly conditioned to the prevailing narrative that all politicians are corrupt — whether it’s Trump’s trumped-up claims about Clinton’s latter-day Watergate, or the PC and NDP cries that the Liberals are all criminals. When the roles are reversed, it could be the opposition who are one day answering to the police about, say, appointing an ambitious MPP to be deputy leader to dissuade him from running federally, or persuading sitting MPPs to make way for a seatless leader.

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When all parties are hoisted on their partisan petards, they will rue the day they ruined it for everyone, for better or for worse. And the police will wonder why they are pursuing politicians for playing politics, rather than chasing common criminals.