In common law, bills of attainder were legislative acts that, without trial, condemned specifically designated persons or groups to death.  Bills of attainder also required the "corruption of blood"; that is, they denied to the condemned's heirs the right to inherit his estate. Bills of pains and penalties, in contrast, singled out designated persons or groups for punishment less than death, such as banishment or disenfranchisement.

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 3: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed[.]

When I went to Iraq and Qatar in 2004 as part of a DOJ Task Force (The Regime Crimes Liaison Office), it was to assist the new government of Iraq with investigating and prosecuting the crimes of the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein against his own people.  As a historian, I was struck by the similarities of Saddam Hussein's regime to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.  They both rose to power suddenly and violently; both used their country's criminal justice system (such as it was) to dispose of their predecessors and political opponents who had tried to stop them.

And now in America.

Since 1996, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has become increasingly politically partisan, to the point that it isbecoming an enforcement arm of the Democrat party instead of an impartial investigative and prosecutorial agency.  I have seen the DOJ use prosecutorial discretion (the ability of federal prosecutors to decide whether or not to prosecute a case, no matter how overwhelming the evidence or lack of in evidence to support the prosecution) to achieve political aims.  Some examples:

Operation Fast and Furious, the brainchild of Arizona U.S. attorney Dennis Burke and Eric Holder.  This fiasco was designed to attack the Second Amendment; it involved the U.S. Attorney's Office's prosecutors and the Phoenix Division of the ATF facilitating the illegal purchase of firearms by Mexican drug distribution organizations, supposedly with the intent of tracking the firearms to their users.  Operation Fast and Furious resulted in a federal agent's murder and God only knows how many other murders.

The Russia Hoax/Steele Dossier.

The prosecutions of Joe Arpaio, Dinish DeSouza, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Peter Navarro, and Steve Bannon, along with the search warrants on James O'Keefe and Mar-a-Lago.  Not only are these actions politically motivated, but the manner in which they were conducted was repugnant: early-morning arrest warrant raids, with the media tipped off to be there with cameras, instead of a court summons; search warrants instead of a subpoena or court order.

Contrast this with the lack of action or the mild action regarding Strzok, McCabe, Hunter Biden, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton, Jon Corzine, Charles Rangel, Angelo Mozilo, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, Christopher Dodd, Kent Conrad, James Johnson, and Daniel Mudd.  The last eight were heavily involved with financial institutions that were central to the 2008 Great Recession.

Now consider the lack of prosecutions for contempt of Congress during congressional hearings for Lois Lerner, Eric Holder, and especially Hillary Clinton.  When asked a question by Senator Ayotte, Clinton screamed, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" instead of answering the question.  The next time you are asked a question in front of a grand jury, or in a courtroom with a judge presiding in front of a petit jury, try that response and see what happens to you.  Hint: You won't like what happens.

Lastly, the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her using a private, personal server through which sensitive and official diplomatic and national security correspondence traversed; instead of appointing a special prosecutor as she should have done, Attorney General Loretta Lynch deferred the decision to prosecute to then–FBI director James Comey, which is an unprecedented act.  In 21 years as a special agent, I never had any prosecutor defer a decision to prosecute to me or any other investigator.  That is a responsibility, the biggest responsibility, perhaps, that a prosecutor must exercise.  To make matters even worse, she pushed the responsibility and the decision on prosecution off on Comey, who could have been in the position of recommending prosecution for crimes on Hillary Clinton, who, if she had been elected, would have had Comey at her mercy, job-wise.  Obviously, Comey was not an impartial actor in that process.

Get the picture?  Republicans get prosecuted; Democrats do not.  When does prosecutorial discretion become a bill of attainder?

Image via Pxhere.