Law & Order

In the criminal justice system,

the people are represented

by two separate, yet equally important groups:

the police, who investigate crime,

and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders.

These are their stories.

We need to go over your schedule for next week.

The Freedom Caucus is rallying for the ban

on trans athletes in women's sports.

They want you in D.C. to support...

No, can we just talk about this tomorrow?

I am fried.

This is a great opportunity for you to get attention

from the national press. We need to nail this down.

And we will, but right now, all I wanna do

is enjoy a nice glass of red wine and some quiet.

Today was supposed to be my day off, remember?

- I'm just doing my job. - I know. I know.

What is that?

Oh, my God.

We need to get you outside and contact security.

Ryan?

Ryan?

We really shouldn't be...

DOA is Ryan Bartell, MD,

owner and resident of the home.

- Good lord. - Brutal.

Let me guess... Blunt force trauma?

There are multiple lacerations on the front

and side of his head.

Looks like the killer used that desk lamp.

Swung it like a bat.

A lot of rage to do that kind of damage.

Yeah, looks like our vic

put up a good fight, all things considered.

There appears to be skin and blood under his fingernails.

I bagged his hands. - Time of death?

You're looking at sometime late this morning,

somewhere between 10:00 a.m. and noon.

Detectives.

Checked the doors and windows like you asked.

No sign of forced entry,

but there are cameras covering the front and rear entrances.

- Okay. Let's get the footage, yeah?

I just talked to the congresswoman.

Her head of security is gonna send it over, ASAP.

Congresswoman?

Vic's wife is Kristin Bartell,

congresswoman from the third district.

Really? Bartell.

She loves being the center of attention.

But I doubt this is the kind of attention she had in mind.

We were married for 15 years.

He was my whole world.

I don't... I don't know.

Congresswoman, do you know anybody

who wanted to harm your husband?

This isn't about him.

He was a saint.

This is about me.

This is about my political views.

This is my fault.

What do you mean, it's your fault?

That was supposed to be me.

I was scheduled to be here all day,

but I got called into the office last minute

for an emergency committee meeting.

What makes you so sure that you were the intended target?

I'm a conservative congresswoman in a state

where admitting that out loud is a mortal sin.

I'm constantly receiving threats.

In the minds of far-left activists,

I'm literally the devil.

Any of those threats stand out in particular?

Last week, there was an email.

And they said that they would kill me in my own home.

Do you know who sent that?

No.

It was anonymous.

I just... I flagged the message for my security team.

"You won't know when, but one day soon, you'll turn around,

and I'll be there, in your house,

with no one around to save you."

Message sent from an IP address registered in your name.

Yeah, I sent it.

I should probably know better, but frankly, she deserved it.

How's that?

I'm a drag queen.

I started a program, Read the House Down.

Once a week, me and other queens

volunteer to read to kids from the community.

You do it in drag?

Well, the idea is to get kids excited about reading

by making it fun.

Aren't drag queens more of an... an adult thing?

Drag is just a celebration of who you are.

The kids love it. It makes it fun.

There's nothing fun about sending a threat

to that congresswoman. - I was being dramatic.

But Bartell introduced a bill that would ban children

from being exposed to drag queens.

It's a coded way of telling the crazies

out there that we're pedophiles.

It sparked all kinds of online hate,

so I thought she should know what it felt like.

- You seem angry. - Damn right I am.

Angry enough to show up at Kristin Bartell's

house yesterday morning?

I would never actually do anything like that.

I'm a pacifist.

All the same, where were you

yesterday morning at 10:00 a.m.?

Dwayne Washington was at a photo shoot

for his literacy program at the time of the murder.

Wow, that's some great contouring.

- Hmm. - But where does that leave us?

I'm being hounded by City Hall, One PP, Capitol Police, it's...

M.E. was able to retrieve DNA

from under Bartell's fingernails,

but there's no match in the system.

Okay, what about footage from the security cameras?

Still waiting on the congresswoman's

people to send it over.

We're combing through all the threats

she's received in the past few months

to see if any of them seem credible.

I've got something interesting.

I've been going through the street cam footage we pulled.

This car shows up at an intersection

near the crime scene multiple times

the morning of the murder.

So it's circling the block?

It looks that way.

And check this... the car belongs to a Paul Koening.

Multiple arrests for rioting, inciting violence,

and stalking.

- All right, guys. You know what to do.

Okay, I have your oat milk cappuccino.

Here you go. - Thank you.

NYPD.

We need to talk to the owner, Paul Koening.

He's not here.

Know where we can find him?

- Nah, man. I just work here.

Mind if we take a look around?

I... I don't know, I think, uh...

Don't you have to have a warrant or whatever?

You wouldn't be Paul, would you?

NYPD.

Where are you running to, Paul?

I didn't do anything.

You sure about that?

Some interesting reading material

you got there in your bag, Paul.

You Antifa folks got a real way with words.

Quite the artist, too, huh?

You are part of Antifa, right?

It's not a group you join

with membership fees or whatever.

It's a political stance, an understanding

of what's right or wrong.

Oh, so you think it's right

to murder a politician's husband?

I had nothing to do with what happened to Ryan Bartell.

Paul, we got video of you in the neighborhood

of a U.S. congresswoman whose husband was beaten to death,

five minutes before his murder.

And we just caught you walking around

with a nightstick and devil photos

of the same congresswoman.

Do the math.

Enlighten me here, Paul.

You get to her house, she's not there,

so you murdered the husband?

He was a family doctor. Why did he deserve that?

I never went inside the house.

I was just checking out the area

because we were planning a peaceful protest

outside of Bartell's home.

You wanna protest outside of a private residence

with a baton, and you wanna call it peaceful?

Politicians like Kristin Bartell

want to insert themselves into the private lives

of every citizen in the country.

So why shouldn't their personal space be fair game?

If you didn't do anything wrong,

why did you try to run?

Because I don't trust the police.

Submit to a DNA test.

And help an authoritarian state

catalog my biological data?

Go to hell.

Choice number two is, we charge you with murder.

Hey, Lou.

We put a rush on Koening's DNA...

Not a match.

And the lab wasn't able to find

any traces of blood on the baton.

- So he's not our killer. - Doesn't look like it.

All right. Cut him loose.