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If this was a Bush/Romney Republican, this wouldn't have happened. The Republicans haven't gone after Democrat politicians, so that is also something to consider. They also aren't the only ones part of designing it.
And of course under your scenario, the spirit of the law that isn't violated when persecuting gangs is violated when getting Trump over this.
Through loopholes you can create a dictatorship out of any democracy and can abuse any system. And so, when such loopholes are abused, you either blame those who abuse them and oppose it, or promote a theory of leopards eating face, if you support the process of abusing the law to get your opponents. Any justice system to work well, requires respecting the spirit of the law, because you can manage to get a lot of people with technicalities, and by abusing the system. No system is so designed as to be infallible to that. There is always something one can find as an excuse if they support a transformation of the system into that.
Ironically, in addition to tit for tat, ideally towards actual crimes done by dem politicians as a deescalating force, to the extend liberals have such attitudes, it is actually justifiable and not just going after ones opponent to consider if people with such ideology are going to abuse their position as judges, bureaucrats, etc, etc. And even people like journalists, academics, have their own enormous influence that is going to affect everything. For the right, protecting the integrity of the system, and not letting their political opponents dominate it and abuse it then become interchangeable. For liberals, the opposite claim is not actually justifiable. Precisely because the right not only haven't prosecuted liberals over BS, but also have failed to prosecute more clear misconduct. And it is precisely that appeasement and sense of no consequences that has encouraged the liberal side into escalating.
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