Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said this in 1928:

> Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retributions.

https://law.jrank.org/pages/11566/Opinion-U-S-Supreme-Court-...

Timothy McVeigh used the beginning of this quote as a statement before his conviction, FWIW.. https://archive.is/xineB