> That's what courts are for.

That isn't really how courts work. If you're violating the letter of the law then you are breaking the law and an actual impartial judge would enforce it against you. In practice whether they let you get away with it is based in significant part on whether or not they like you. If the judge doesn't like the administration then maybe they do like you. But if the judge doesn't like you for the same reason the administration doesn't like you then you're going to jail. And it shouldn't have to depend on that; we shouldn't have laws that people are constantly in technical violation of so that the only thing keeping anyone out of jail is prosecutorial discretion and judicial affinity.

Meanwhile you can characterize anything in a negative light. A random home kitchen typically isn't going to meet the standards for commercial operation and the prosecutor's press release isn't going to say "we're prosecuting our enemies for movie night", it's going to say "defendants were operating a for-profit restaurant in violation of zoning rules and storing uncooked meat above fish in the freezer used for storing food sold for resale in violation of the health code" and then stick them with a fine that would make them lose their house.

> Moreover if you look at how authoritarian regimes work in practice, dissents are often prosecuted under national security laws, campaign finance violations, or libel laws, not because they violated the health code by having a movie night.

When the dictator of petrolistan wants to retaliate against their enemies and those laws are available for that, sure.

When the mayor of some US town wants to do the same thing, they might very well resort to health code violations that wouldn't have otherwise been enforced.

Deterrents well short of political executions are still very much official misconduct.