The staffer at Sen. Susan Collins’ office was accessible, smart, and personable. We found a lot to talk about — veterans’ justice, raising our kids, a Catholic upbringing, lawyer stuff. Eventually, though, we turned to the reason for my visit. He supposed it was Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, Sen. Collins’ vote, and the future of Roe v. Wade.

“It’s a little bigger than that,” I said. I handed him a paper with my question. “If it seems clear that all of these lifetime judiciary appointments, including the Supreme Court, are being made by someone who holds his office after he or his campaign worked with Russia, or bought off bad press, or accepted contributions that were illegal, or a combination of those things — in other words, that the election itself was likely not legally gained — when will Sen. Collins stand up and call for the appointees of such an illegitimate occupant of the presidency to step down? Aren’t these appointments fruit of the poisonous tree?”

I couldn’t tell if his eyes widened because it was an interesting question, or because we’d parted ways from an enjoyable conversation. Perhaps both. As a lawyer, he understood how calling these judicial appointments “fruit of the poisonous tree” makes sense. And the term perfectly describes the situation our nation is in.

“Fruit of the poisonous” tree is a doctrine concerning evidence that is illegitimately seized, and the admissibility of all of the evidence that might flow from it. Think of it as the little black book of criminal associates that perhaps a law enforcement officer broke into someone’s house and took, and also the names therein. In 1920, the Supreme Court determined that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against illegal search and seizure could not be admitted at trial, nor could any of the evidence which derived solely from that initial illegal seizure. In 1929, Justice Felix Frankfurter gave the doctrine its memorable name — fruit of the poisonous tree. The illicit tree is not just inadmissible, so are its noxious fruits. The doctrine goes to the very notion of fairness and the prevention of injustice. To strongly discourage law enforcement from illegally obtaining evidence, Frankfurter reasoned, it’s not enough to prohibit merely the direct result of the illegal seizure. All of the fruits of that result are prohibited.

That a basis in illegality is so fundamentally unfair as to render unjust all of its fruits is actually what Trump has been tweeting for months now. Witness: “There is No Collusion! The Robert Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt, headed now by 17 (increased from 13, including an Obama White House lawyer) Angry Democrats, was started by a fraudulent Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. Therefore, the Witch Hunt is an illegal Scam!” (Trump tweet, July 30, 2018). Trump’s point is grounded in the same concept of justice: If the dossier really was the root of Mueller’s Russian probe, and it really was fraudulent, Trump says that the resulting “witch hunt” would be itself ill-gotten gains, and the investigation’s results should be nullified.

Unfortunately for Trump, this is misrepresentation — oh, heck, at this point let’s just call it lying. There are not 17 Democrats on the investigation; Mueller himself is a Republican; the dossier was not the start of the investigation (indeed, one of Trump’s own insiders tipped off the FBI and accidentally set the investigation in motion); at any rate the dossier so far has been verified, and was not begun nor initially paid for by Clinton, but by a conservative news organization.

Yet Trump’s point, while not factually applicable to the Russia investigation, ironically is perfectly apt in describing his occupancy of the White House and all that follows. It seems increasingly clear that his very presidency is the poisonous tree, the ill-gotten gain not just of misogyny, racial animus, and voter suppression, but direct and illegal behavior by a host of malefactors, Trump among them. The growing evidence shows that the presidency was illegitimately seized. Lifetime appointments stemming from this poisonous tree are thus poisonous fruit. The decisions of those in his executive branch, the vice president himself, executive orders, and reversals of policy — all, poisonous fruit.

The question, then, is what I left with Collins’ agreeable staffer. If the occupant of the Presidency did what the growing evidence shows he or his campaign did to secure his office, when will Sen. Collins demand nullification of his presidency and its fruits? Shouldn’t we wait until the investigation is complete rather than reward the potential theft of our highest office with lifetime appointments that will permanently alter the course of our democracy?

I’m still waiting for her answer. I’ll get to ask her myself, on Thursday.

Jackie Sartoris is a former Brunswick town councilor.