I sat on a patio in Arizona and understood something that had been available to me for seven years.

I had believed I was permitted to run that case because I was right, and because the evidence was clean, and because I did everything downstream of it lawfully — which I did.

Every subpoena, every hold, every warrant. By the book, exactly as I’d said.

I had not been permitted because I was right.

I had been permitted because a seventy-one-year-old three-star with a granddaughter felt sorry for me at three in the morning, and did not want to be the person who said no to a woman whose babies had nearly died.

That is not a system working. That is a favor. And a favor is the precise legal definition of the thing I had recused myself to avoid.