Former Chicago cop William Whitley may be despicable scum, but that’s not why he copped a plea to having sex with a minor in the Northern District of Illinois rather than a state court.

Whitley pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to one count of sex trafficking of a minor.

Was it not bad enough that Whitley, with his uniform on a hanger and his gun under the pillow, paid for sex with a 14-year-old prostitute that it’s characterized as “sex trafficking”? This tidbit is tossed in somewhat gratuitously as a reminder that the phrase evokes an image of pimps and their sex slaves, not a john buying sex.

But even this characterization fails to explain how Whitley ended up in federal court, charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a). How did they make “a federal case” of a routine offense? One word: rubber.

In the plea agreement, prosecutors specifically mention the condom use, stating “Whitley used condoms during the commercial sex acts with Minor A” and he “acknowledges that Trojan condoms and LifeStyles condoms are manufactured outside the state of Illinois.”

Whatever points the prosecutors get for imagination are lost for absurdity. Why not the bedsheets beneath them being made out of state? Were they not an instrumentality of the crime? Or the air they were breathing? Does air not travel across state lines?  And unsurprisingly, there’s a law prof explaining the righteousness of this chaos theory of federal nexus.

“The gun traveling is analogous to the condom traveling,” said Juliet Sorensen, a Northwestern University law professor and former federal prosecutor. “The person who pulled the trigger may not have traveled, but the gun did. This police officer may not have traveled, but an aspect that he used to commit the crime did.”

That Whitley wore condoms was entirely ancillary to the commission of the crime. Then again, if he didn’t, might he have been charged with attempted murder for having the potential to spread a loathsome disease to a child?

With a little effort, it’s fairly easy to concoct a federal nexus to any conduct of any person. The connection is rhetorical and nonsensical, but when the feds want to get you, all they need to do is come up with quasi-palatable story to shift local crime to federal court.

There were other aspects of Whitley’s actions that hit the “federal nexus,” including his use of a cellphone to take compromising pictures of two girls and using money to pay them, prosecutors said.

Cellphones? Sure, they take pictures, but they also make telephone calls, text messages and can access the internet. They totally impact federal commerce, every one of them. And money? Are you kidding me? That’s always interstate commerce, since money buys stuff, whether at the grocery store or, well, anywhere. How much more interstate commerce could you possibly want?

Why the judge bought this misbegotten federal nexus is a mystery, but it obviously came as a product of the United States Attorney’s decision to take the case under its auspices.

The U.S. attorney’s office also may have been making a policy statement about the seriousness of human trafficking when it made its decision to charge Whitley, she said.

The preface to the “Principles of Federal Prosecution” page on the U.S. Department of Justice website offers a detailed explanation on how these decision should be made. The highlight: “A determination to prosecute represents a policy judgment that the fundamental interests of society require the application of federal criminal law to a particular set of circumstances — recognizing both that serious violations of federal law must be prosecuted, and that prosecution entails profound consequences for the accused, crime victims, and their families.”

See that word again, “trafficking”? Whether the need to prosecute prostitution cases in federal court is now a “fundamental interest of society” is a curious use of resources, particularly when the crime carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years.

While a sentence of such length may seem appropriate to some for the nefarious offense of sex trafficking, which is what the federal statute exists to address because no one would be so crazy as to prosecute a routine prostitution case in federal court, it might be a bit much here. As despicable as Whitley may be, a 10 year mandatory minimum is kind of steep.

There is an alternative view of why the feds chose to go after Whitley, based upon him being a Chicago cop and the concern that he would get a walk from the locals because, well, it’s Rahm’s town and he loves him some cops. Maybe the feds didn’t want to let this mutt go. Maybe they saw this as an opportunity to virtue signal.

But regardless of the United States Attorney’s good intentions for taking on this case, and the judge’s blinking when it came to accepting federal jurisdiction on so tenuous and ridiculous a thread, this is a matter of some concern for the eradication of any meaningful commerce clause connection. The rubbers? They don’t pass the smell test.