How long, we wonder, until the Senate Judiciary Committee or the Chief Justice of the United States — or someone — upbraids Senator Sheldon Whitehouse? The Wall Street Journal has been all over the senator’s bullying (he threatened the Supreme Court with restructuring if it didn’t rule the way he wanted in a gun rights case). His personal attack on a federal appeals judge as she’s about to decide an important matter, though, cries out for more than newspaper editorials.

The judge is Neomi Rao. She rides the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. She is one of three judges on the panel that will hear the emergency petition for a writ of mandamus filed by General Michael Flynn. The writ General Flynn is seeking would order the district judge hearing General Flynn’s case — Emmet Sullivan — to grant the motion of the United States to dismiss the charges altogether, ending the prosecution.

The petition for the writ was filed Tuesday. A panel, whose members were chosen at random, was promptly established. It included, in addition to Judge Rao, two other distinguished circuit judges, Karen Henderson and Robert Wilkins. On Friday they issued their first order, giving Judge Sullivan 10 days to file a response to the petition. It also invited the United States, which is prosecuting the case, to respond, if it wants to, within the same ten-day period.

That order is an unsurprising, even standard move. If there was any dissent, the judges didn’t mention it. The whole thing took a short paragraph. It mentioned the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Section 48 (a). That covers dismissal by the government. It says the “government may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment, information, or complaint. The government may not dismiss the prosecution during trial without the defendant’s consent.”

In this case, the defendant agrees with the prosecutors that the case be dismissed. So there’s really no case or controversy left, that is, no reason for the judge not to grant the petition for a writ of mandamus. So how did Senator Whitehouse react? “Where you see Neomi Rao,” he tweetered Friday, “you can expect a lot of Trumpy dirt to follow. She’s a cartoon of a fake judge.” It was a shocking message on the eve of a judicial proceeding and from a member of the Judiciary Committee.

It’s not as if Judge Rao were, say, the lone dissenter on the panel. As far as anyone can tell, the panel was unanimous. It didn’t hint, either, at where it’s going in the case, though it did mention the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 48 (a). That covers dismissal by the government. It says the “government may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment, information, or complaint. The government may not dismiss the prosecution during trial without the defendant’s consent.”

In this case, though, the defendant and the prosecutors agree on dismissal. This owes to new information turned up by the Justice Department, suggesting that the general was railroaded. The three judges also referenced a precedent from the D.C. Circuit itself. The case, called United States v. Fokker Services, was decided four years ago by a panel of three towering circuit riders, David Sentelle, Laurence Silberman, and the circuit’s current chief judge, Sri Srinivasan.

In Fokker, the trial judge wanted to keep pursuing a case the prosecution wanted to defer. Yet the Constitution, Judge Srinivasan wrote, “allocates primacy in criminal charging decisions to the Executive Branch.” Its authority “embraces decisions about whether to initiate charges, whom to prosecute, which charges to bring, and whether to dismiss charges once brought.” The court noted that the Judiciary “generally lacks authority to second-guess those Executive determinations.”

Precedents are not always dispositive. Nor is the kind of bullying Mr. Whitehouse seems to be making his modus operandi. “Watch this space,” he threatened on twitter. Which is why we are wondering whether and when the Judiciary Committee will step up. Or the Chief Justice. Or both. No judge ought to have to sit through the kind of insults coming from Mr. Whitehouse while the Senate committee that confirmed her and the Chief Justice fail to defend her in a meaningful way.