What were they going to charge her with, “Motorboating in the first degree”?

What an embarrassment. Made worse, by the way, by this pitiful statement from the cops this morning. The career stripper/porn star, who’s been famous for doing this long enough that it brought her face to face with a future president more than 10 years ago, is now involved in “human trafficking”?

What’s next, a Mann Act indictment?

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1017442158708699138

As Ed noted earlier, Ohio has a law that makes it a misdemeanor to touch, or be touched by, a nude or semi-nude dancer in a strip club. Daniels allegedly put three different cops’ heads between her breasts while dancing, thus rendering her a criminal. Two wrinkles, though. Michael Avenatti claims that the cops asked her to do it, which if true sounds like entrapment. (By their own admission, the cops approached the stage after Daniels had started dancing and touched another patron, putting them in position to be touched by her.) More importantly, this particular law is almost never enforced: The county sheriff told the Columbus Dispatch that, dating back to 2007, the number of charges filed under it is exactly … zero. They broke it in on a woman who happens to be in a months-long legal fight with the president of the United States.

Avenatti tweeted within the past hour that the charges have now been dropped, ostensibly on a technicality but more likely because the cops came off looking worse in all this than Daniels did.

I am pleased to report that the charges against my client @stormydaniels have been dismissed in their entirety (below motion was just granted). I want to thank Joe Gibson & his colleagues at the prosecutors ofc for their professionalism starting with our first call early this am. pic.twitter.com/xHPSWsyqM2

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) July 12, 2018

The law says that it’s illegal to make contact with a nude dancer who “regularly appears” nude at a club. (Why it requires regular appearances if the point is to deter sexual contact between dancers and patrons, I have no idea.) This was Daniels’s first time at this particular club, ergo she hasn’t appeared “regularly,” ergo that’s enough of a reason for the local D.A. to sign off on making this go away before the county is embroiled in a very public fight with a camera-friendly defense lawyer about whether it’s a good use of taxpayer money to send four undercover officers to bust strippers for motorboating their audience.

Still one question, though: Was the cops’ motive political or something else? Was someone in the chain of command a Trump fan who wanted to exact a little revenge on Daniels for hassling the president, or was this a more mundane thing in which the vice squad chose to seize an opportunity to advertise a zero-tolerance policy by busting the most famous stripper in America after she showed up in their jurisdiction?