The federal case against Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas may or may not have merit. What is already clear is that the hyperpartisan leadership of the Justice Department and FBI has done little to earn public trust when targeting another prominent Democrat.

Lucas, the Virginia Senate president pro tempore, is among the commonwealth’s most powerful Democrats. National audiences generally know her as the Democratic leader who spearheaded a redistricting effort in Virginia.

This week, however, Lucas drew attention for a far different reason. Federal authorities charged her in connection with what they alleged was a role leading a criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.

An indictment unsealed Thursday charged Lucas and six other defendants, including several of her relatives, according to a Justice Department statement released before a scheduled news conference. A department spokesperson said Lucas surrendered.

The charges arrived roughly five months after the FBI searched Lucas’ office and a cannabis shop in which she had invested. That sequence places the indictment within a broader federal investigation, though the ultimate strength and legitimacy of the case remain to be determined.

Lucas responded by invoking her personal history and making clear that she views the prosecution through a political lens. “I grew up under Jim Crow,” Lucas said in a statement.

“I’ve seen what happens when people in power try to silence those who stand up to them. I spent my life fighting back, and I’m not stopping now.”

It remains entirely possible that investigators acted in good faith during a responsible law enforcement operation. It is also possible that the available evidence will provide no legitimate reason to question either the investigation or the motivations of those responsible for it.

But federal law enforcement does not operate in a vacuum, especially under leaders who have repeatedly raised concerns about politicization. Even a legitimate case becomes harder to evaluate when the institutions bringing it have squandered the benefit of the doubt.

That is precisely why federal law enforcement should not be politicized. Against the current backdrop, the Lucas prosecution looks uncomfortably like another retaliatory investigation targeting a Democrat, launched during the closing stretch of a critical election cycle.

The Justice Department has pursued too many Trump targets too frequently while corruption cases involving White House allies have been cast aside. That history does not prove anything about the evidence against Lucas, but it makes skepticism toward the department unavoidable.

Fox News also apparently received advance notice about the FBI operation in May and aired live footage of the search. Because the network is aligned with Republican politics, its apparent access only deepens concerns that political considerations could be surrounding the case.

The timing is particularly striking because the indictment came with less than two weeks remaining in a critical election cycle. The Washington Post noted that federal officials have historically avoided public actions in politically fraught cases immediately before elections.

“While federal officials have historically avoided taking public steps in politically fraught cases ahead of elections,” the Washington Post reported, “the case against Lucas is the second prominent action the administration has taken against a Democratic critic of Trump in the past 10 days.”

None of that settles whether Lucas committed the conduct alleged by federal authorities. It does explain why a prosecution that might otherwise be assessed solely on its evidence instead generates difficult questions about retaliation, credibility and political timing.

Time will reveal what comes from the indictment and whether the case withstands scrutiny. Until then, the Justice Department and FBI are confronting a credibility crisis they helped create, leaving the public to question a prosecution that arrives at an extraordinarily fraught political moment.