Since when is it a crime to buy rope, a knife, and a few garbage bags?

Last year, a man stopped in at a phone store in midtown Manhattan and picked up a new cell phone. In 1995, a man calling himself “Robert Kling” walked into a body shop in Kansas and rented a Ryder truck. This January, a man in Massachusetts celebrated the new year by buying $450 worth of cleaning supplies.

The phone guy was Rex Heuermann, also known as the Gilgo Beach killer, who used his burner phones to solicit victims. The truck renter was Timothy McVeigh, who drove that truck to Oklahoma City. The guy with the sudden yen to clean also happens to have a missing wife and a blood-stained knife that he somehow overlooked.

All of them would still be walking around free if courts were using the standard of evidence Rep. Jim Jordan now wants to apply to Donald Trump and his allies.