“Villain” is the best I can muster right now. I really can’t find the right word for someone who would do what Sofia Nelson did, or who would be able to look at themselves in the mirror after she did it.

Nelson, a close friend of J.D. Vance’s in law school and for many years thereafter, sent about 90 of the emails and text messages they exchanged from 2014 through 2017 to The New York Times. Nelson is gay or a trans-male or a trans-female, or something, I couldn’t possibly care less. Nor will I read the Times’ article about what its partisan “Slime Trump and Vance!” posse found in the emails thus far. All that matters from an ethics perspective is the throbbing betrayal of trust represented by anyone the sharing past private communications with a media outlet without obtaining consent and permission from the other party to the exchanges. It’s revolting that the Times would accept such stuff: this is a National Enquirer level story. Trump’s running mate once wrote “Love you” to a guy who is now a chick! Ew! Does that mean Vance is gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that?

What’s the motive for this metaphorical knife in the back? That doesn’t matter either, though Nelson, who the Times says “opposes the Trump/Vance ticket” told the paper that she hopes the emails “inform the opinion of voters about Mr. Vance.” Let’s see: if Sofia (that’s her in his (him in her?) “close friends with J.D. Vance” stage above) had personal knowledge that J.D. was a child molester, a serial killer, a cannibal, or a terrorist, the correct course would be to contact authorities, not the media. One only contacts the media with information confided to you by a close freind when you want to hurt him or her personally. What’s that Clarence the Angel writes to George Bailey in the his inscription on the first page of “Tom Sawyer”? Oh, right: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.” Well, any man who has friends like Sofia Nelson would be better off living in a cave. Just one would be enough to make me a hermit. I have had friends who disappointed me, hurt me, treated me unjustly and whom I have cut out of my life. The worst of them is a better human being than Sofia Nelson.

Naturally, she is a fan of the New York Times.

Interestingly, the Times says that Nelson is a public defender, a lawyer. Rule 8.3 of all but one jurisdiction requires any lawyer who has “reliable information that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to practice law shall inform the appropriate professional authority.” The Rules, however, narrows what it considers violations of honesty and trustworthiness that trigger Rule 3.8 to conduct that is either criminal or related to the practice of law. Purely personal conduct doesn’t qualify, though I have long held that in certain extreme circumstances it should, those exception being in the realm I would call signature significance. A friend who would do what Nelson has done to J.D. Vance has conclusively demonstrated that no one can or should trust her—not employers, other friends, associates, colleagues or clients. I would have no hesitation insisting that Nelson has proven herself unfit to practice law. I wouldn’t trust her to dog-sit or to mail my water bill. Neither should anyone else.

If the Trump/Vance ticket is judged by the character of its enemies, its appeal should be very strong indeed.