From the FBI agent: "I erased the contents of the computer hard knowing that the court has ordered that the computer be submitted for a forensic examination. I did so with the intention of making the contents of the computer’s hard unavailable for forensic examination. At the time, I knew that the contents of the hard drive were relevant to an official proceeding, that is, Cause No. 5:17-CR-50010, United States v. Woods et al. I corruptly performed and had performed, the erasures with intent to impair the integrity and availability of the computer hard drive and its contents for use in that official proceeding."
In the case in question, the defendant (a state Senator) requested the laptop that contained the hard drive for examination, because it would contain evidence that they believed would demonstrate their innocence. The FBI agent was ordered to produce the laptop and did so -- but only after first purchasing and using a forensic disk-wiping service.
The withheld recordings might just have led the jury to distrust witnesses. Or, might have implicated other people besides. Doesn't mean the pol wasn't a crook. Or that the agent wasn't. There is often more than enough blame to go around, but prosecutors like things to look simple.
Just read a handful of articles -- I think the approximate timeline / subtext is as follows;
The FBI started investigating a kickback scheme from a State Senator (Jon Woods) who was steering contracts to a small school in exchange for cash and payments to a nonprofit he ran from school administrators. They quickly 'flipped' one of the admins at the school (Micah Neal) who agreed to provide evidence to the FBI in exchange for a guilty plea and reduction in his own sentence.
Neal offered to start recording conversations with Woods, but the FBI told him they didn't want him to / need him to (presumably because they had enough written evidence and financial detail to make the case). Neal recorded 119 conversations anyway and gave them to the FBI.
When the DOJ indicted Woods, his attorneys would be given all investigative material and the FBI agent in question sent him 39 audio files. Woods' attorney realized there were missing files, so he had the court force the FBI to turn over the rest of them, and that's when the FBI agent went out and erased the laptop.
Reading between the lines - the FBI agent probably sent the most 'damning' recordings, left out anything that would impugn their witness, and then panicked when he realized he was caught. The DOJ didn't use the recordings at trial and hadn't asked for them, so I suspect there was no greater motive in the deletion than trying to preserve the conviction/investigative effort.
Corrupt Senator wasting taxpayer money goes to jail, bad FBI agent goes to jail, all seems fine in the end.
Even a TRIM won't necessarily remove blocks entirely, just move data around such that there are open free spaces.
The most secure way to erase an SSD is write just insane amounts to it, and then put it through a ballistics test with a 1911 and then throw the remaining parts into Mt Doom.
You fill the drive with random data. No optimization can refuse to store data that can't be deduped. There's still the likely possibility that extra capacity on the SSD is untouched but you can at least get the bulk of it.
Heh, he had it wiped professionally and then wiped it two more times, himself. Interesting background, as the recordings came from an informer, who's recordings in question were made of his own volition... in hopes to provide more evidence to reduce his sentence in the affair(s). Wild story, with plenty of twists. The agent is def going to jail, but the missing evidence is not necessarily exculpatory. Both senators & the lobbyist were convicted on most(all?) counts.
Yeah... without delving into specifics here, it's possible to both deeply distrust the FBI and the people they are investigating.
An often-abusive organization can be tasked with investigating deeply corrupt people, and we don't need to pick a side and declare them the good guys out of tribal loyalty.
>we don't need to pick a side and declare them the good guys out of tribal loyalty.
We do if we want to have some veneer of ideological consistency to our calls to send the feds after groups X, Y and Z (values of X, Y and Z vary over time) that aren't very bad in the grand scheme of things but whom we want to be marginalized anyway. Reconciling the evil that goes on under the guise of federal law enforcement with throwing ever increasing resources at them to chase this year's boogeyman is beyond the reach of all but the most skilled mental gymnasts so people just call them the good guys because that's easier and doesn't run the risk of you having to defend a nuanced position.
Edit: I do not think the FBI (or most of federal law enforcement for that matter) should exist in their current capacity, but the above is how it appears many people's opinion of the FBI has been formed and that should make a lot of people here uncomfortable.
I don't like the way the FBI was used to "infiltrate" the counter-culture of the 1960s and early 1970s. But that doesn't make me write off the FBI as the bad guys.
I do like the way the FBI is used to infiltrate extreme right wing groups of the present day. But that doesn't make me think that the FBI are the good guys.
That is exactly what they are saying, they want the police to illegally go after the people they disagree with politically, but not the people they agree with, without regard for due process, civil rights, or whether a crime has been committed.
I don't know what is in your heart, but that is what you said? Lots of counter culture groups of the 60's were committing acts of terrorism, including bombings and kidnappings. Lots of right wing groups now are nothing more than political organizing. And vice versa. The way you said it, you didn't differentiate between 60's terrorist groups and modern peaceful right wing political groups.
The point is that the role of the FBI has to be considered on a case by case basis. They are neither the good/bad guys because they infiltrated the Weather Underground or SDS in the 60s, and they are not the good/bad guys because they are infiltrating right wing groups today. Likewise, just because Hoover used them for his own personal vendettas - incontrovertibly - doesn't make them a priori the good or the bad guys. The same is true in reverse: none of the groups are a priori the good or bad guys because they've been investigated or infiltrated by the FBI.
BTW, the vast majority of the organizations the FBI infiltrated between 1963 and 1976 were non-violent and dedicated to peace.
Some of us think that people we vehemently disagree with deserve to have their rights upheld and be subject to due process.
The real tragedy is that people like you who don't believe in equality under law poison the well for the rest of us. In a world where you people are happy to enable slimy things to get your way everyone else must behave similarly or be at a disadvantage.
Anonymous statements mean nothing. You can easily Sybil up multiple contradictory positions. And to be honest, I think you probably do.
If your chosen anonymous identity were tied to persistent effort, one could validate, but in the absence of that, you could just use arbitrarily many "throwaway" accounts that all claim ideological consistency on as many issues as desired. Any claims to ideological consistency are therefore of zero value.
It's like me claiming that I have given away $10 billion today to charity.
Feds and capitol police opened the gates for the protesters.
In regards to Whitmer, without the feds inciting the idiots in the group, none of this happens. A federal jury already failed to convict several members, so the "justice" system is going to keep retrying until they succeed. This is all a sham.
They opened the gates because they didn't have enough forces to hold the gates. The videos where the gates were overrun instead show quite clearly what the alternative was. The gates were pushed over and police assaulted.
You won't find any evidence of a superior force opening the gates. One commonly shown video of an officer waving protestors past was actually him signalling for other officers to pull out of the crowd and the officers were clearly outnumbered in that situation.
I really have a hard time with comments like these. It's hard to believe it's just ignorance nearly two years later.
It's a shame that the original live streams and clips, and the accounts that posted them, have been banned or deleted since then, but I know what I watched that day, and I know how police actually respond to a real riot.
January 6th was a bunch of people with unbreakable faith (some still even after) to a grifter of a magnitude not seen in this country for as long as I'm aware of. He told them to go to the capitol, and that he would go with them. I watched as a horde of people were practically escorted around, having barriers and gates opened up for them, and police allowing protestors to take selfies with them.
After that, the man who told his followers to go to the capitol couldn't even muster any support or pardons for them.
If you are going to say that there was no federal collusion here, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
My point was to reinforce GP's stating that you don't need to pick sides. You need to examine particular situations on a case-by-case basis, rather than coming to some sort of simplistic catch-all description such as "the FBI are the bad guys" or "everyone the FBI investigates are the bad guys".
The article is about a specific instance of an FBI agent destroying exculpatory evidence and a potentially innocent man sitting in prison because of this corruption. In the comments, we are examining this specific situation and, in this case, the FBI IS indeed the bad guy.
This is hardly an isolated incident either, so I don't see anything untoward about discussing a pattern of corrupt behavior coming out of the FBI that dates back decades, and calling them out on this malfeasance.
Also, you can try to backpedal all you want. In the original comment of yours that I questioned, you indeed implied that you didn't care about FBI corruption as long as the target is someone you don't like. Your words were pretty clear, so I have a hard time believing that you didn't mean exactly what you said.
At no point did I say "I do not care about FBI corruption". I said that regardless of my feelings about specific FBI actions, I do not see a reason based on those actions to automatically make them (or those investigated) the good or bad guys in general. If you have a hard time believing that's what I said and meant, I can't help you.
You gave two examples of FBI corruption and said regarding one of them, “I do like the way the FBI is used to infiltrate extreme right wing groups of the present day.” How is liking corruption against your political foes not being apathetic towards that corruption?
>We do if we want to have some veneer of ideological consistency
I would argue the opposite.
Ideology generally doesn't mean you should pick a side and stick with it all the time.
For example I can disagree with the FBI one day based on my ideology, and agree the next based on my ideology. The FBI is an institution made up of people who make various choices, not an ideology.
I get that this could go down a rabbit hole of definitions and so on but that's my approach generally, to a lot of things.
You can hold everyone accountable. You're basically saying "Side A is worse than side B so therefore side B is excused from the bad things they do" that makes no sense.
Its more like "Side A has illegally destroyed evidence that would have helped Side B's case, therefore we can't be certain Side B has actually done the things Side A has accused them of."
you need a certain amount of evidence to prove a crime. What does destroyed evidence have to do with whether that crime has been committed or if there is sufficient evidence to prove it?
It's exculpatory evidence. I.e. Evidence that could exonerate the defendant and weaken or outright dismantle the State's case.
This isn't evidence that makes the defendant guiltier...but could be a factual finding that blows open the case meaning ya got the wrong guy, or the guy is still guilty, but not the end of the story.
If it were evaluated and available to the Court, a more nuanced discussion could be had of the ramifications on the case. The State destroyed it, however, introducing adverse inference.
This usually comes coupled, when a defendant does it, of causing the Prosecution to become entitled to having the Judge instruct the Jury to see the destroyed evidence in the worst light possible. Seeing as it was the State doing it, that would imply the Court must take that evidence as nothing less than completely undermining the State's original case.
If you aren't willing to throw a guilty man on the streets to make damn sure your LE edifice doesn't put the innocent in harm's way, wtf are you doing as a Court System? It sure isn't justice.
Why would you need to mention this? This is normal default way of thinking since the FBI and who it investigates are unrelated except for the the investigation./
> Something like this should result in the defendant being automatically found not guilty, and the agent sent to jail for the maximum sentence the defendant was facing. This is a complete and unacceptable breach of the public trust, and of civil liberties.
The FBI is an org large enough that it fights with itself at times. It is thousands of people, some of which are going to be untrustworthy, because that's how humans work. But that's not unique to the FBI.
Now, it is a nexus of power that is prone to abuse. (Be sure to check out the lingerie display in the Hoover Building if you visit.) And I do think it needs some reforms - oversight, control and sunlight are sorely lacking. Just like the rest of US LE, they need to be far better-controlled.
The people should control their government. USSC ended that four decades ago by creating the policy of shielding government bad actors through 'qualified immunity'.
If an FBI agent had to delete audio recordings because he was afraid it would have proved the defendant's innocence, I'm going to have to go ahead and side with the defendant here. I don't know what tribes you're referring to, but this is a case of simple inference.
The FBI was investigating a Republican for context.
The FBI has always selectively targeted politicians going back to J Edgar Hoover, and the entire organization has political corruption in its founding and DNA.
The FBI was founded to go after politicians. Add in prosecutorial discretion and such an organisation will always be charged with selective enforcement. One of their first cases was prosecuting a murderer of wealthy Indians in Oklahoma the locals ignored [1]. Yes, it has a troubled history. But I haven’t seen a great argument for what could replace it as our nation’s anti-corruption and major crimes force.
How has someone been convicted of trafficking children, yet the FBI and DOJ have not released any of the names or charged any of their clients? Everything else seem to leak out right away.
There are plenty more examples. Take a look at some of the OIG reports that have come out in the last 10 years if you want a real in depth look.
There is something wrong with our FBI and DOJ and it needs to be rooted out. I agree with you regarding the replacement but at the same time we cannot pretend its actual doing anti-corruption or major crimes work fairly. Both organizations selectively chooses who to go after based on the employees personal feelings. That is not okay. That is not justice.
If your position is that there is no way around politics due to selective enforcement then it sounds like it needs to be an elected position with its enumerated rights clearly spelled out that is accountable to the citizenry and not the people who appoint them. A kind of national sheriff if you will.
It's amazing that such an obvious statement as the above is being down-voted.
Yes, right now it's trendy to be pro-FBI since they are going after Trump, and Trump bad. However, the FBI routinely violates civil rights and like any police organization attracts bad actors and will abuse it's power to the extent it is not prevented from doing so.
> The laptop became an issue when it was used to copy audio recordings the government says it never sought.
> Neal, a former state representative of Springdale, carried an audio recorder disguised as a pen during most of 2016. He was cooperating with the government and told investigators he was willing to wear a hidden recording device. Investigators declined, but Neal went ahead and recorded any conversation he thought might interest investigators. He said he hoped he could be of more value to the government and reduce his sentence. He pleaded guilty on Jan. 4, 2017.
> Cessario used his FBI laptop to make copies of the audio files after they were placed in a Dropbox file-sharing folder. He testified in a February court hearing he copied every file that was there and copied them to computer disc in November 2016. Copies of those recordings were turned over to the defense in April 2017.
> According to court testimony, not all the files were in the Dropbox folder the day Cessario downloaded the files and then made his copies. For whatever reason, only 39 of at least 119 audio files made it to the defense. Recorded conversations specifically mentioned in texts from Neal's attorney to Cessario in 2016 were not there.
> Cessario was ordered Dec. 4 in an email from Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Jennen to turn over the laptop for examination to try and find out what happened. That same day Cessario had the hard drive professionally erased at a computer shop in Bentonville, then erased it again himself before turning it in on Dec. 7, he testified in a pretrial hearing Jan. 25.
Thanks, I was looking for a specific claim of what exculpatory evidence was supposedly on the laptop, but all of the articles I encountered just said that it contained "evidence"
So, every major unethical, immoral or even outright treasonous act in the past decade dwindles down to a few scapegoats.
The engineer from the car company fudging its pollution data, Jefferey Epstein, Child trafficking rings of the high and mighty, stock market frauds, and the list goes on.
This is true across the world to a degree.
All this technology, laws, systems, institutions, people, moral education, increased awareness and everything modern has not moved the society a lot in any positive direction. Just wobbling around a point, swinging temporarily around the corrupt core.
> All this technology, laws, systems, institutions, people, moral education, increased awareness and everything modern has not moved the society a lot in any positive direction. Just wobbling around a point, swinging temporarily around the corrupt core.
In fairness, there also hasn't been much development of proactively moral technology, moreso reactively moral i.e. detective and responsive.
To wit:
> According to court testimony, not all the files were in the Dropbox folder the day Cessario downloaded the files and then made his copies. For whatever reason, only 39 of at least 119 audio files made it to the defense. Recorded conversations specifically mentioned in texts from Neal's attorney to Cessario in 2016 were not there.
> Cessario was ordered Dec. 4 in an email from Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Jennen to turn over the laptop for examination to try and find out what happened. That same day Cessario had the hard drive professionally erased at a computer shop in Bentonville, then erased it again himself before turning it in on Dec. 7, he testified in a pretrial hearing Jan. 25.
Audit trails and forensic tech all over the place surfaced it, which theory holds should be a dissuasive factor on future corruption. Time will tell though; moral and immoral tech and moral/immoral implementations of tech are in a runaway arms race.
Their comment relates to a corrupt and entitled elite, which has come to exist in most societies down through history. The trick is to peacefully cycle the elite out of power before they become corrupt, because it seems that most humans will become corrupt, given the opportunity.
Power is having people in key positions that can change an outcome when its needed. All of the security in the world doesn't do any good if the humans enforcing it are compromised.
Something like this should result in the defendant being automatically found not guilty, and the agent sent to jail for the maximum sentence the defendant was facing. This is a complete and unacceptable breach of the public trust, and of civil liberties.
Probably not, but "something" needs to be done obviously. Maybe they can be reformed in place, but sometimes burn it down and start over is the right answer.
It would be logistically and all around easier to replace the corrupt FBI and it's culture than these two attempts by entire nations at replacing their corrupt police forces.
It is needed. Not because of anything that's happened the last couple years, but because the FBI has been run and staffed by criminals for decades.
I know why Trump fans want to get rid of the FBI, because then they have a much easier time bribing local officials than a larger bureaucratic organization. I have no doubt that corruption exists within the FBI but if anything we've seen corruption exist much more in smaller groups within law enforcement.
Nobody is saying it’s cool - only that the timing is suspicious when all of the Trumpists abruptly pivoted to “defund the police” when their guys turned out not to be above the law. Most people who aren’t that partisan want the FBI to be fairer to everyone, not disbanded so they can’t prosecute corrupt Republicans.
Everything needs massive reforming. Laws need massive reforming. The position of President of the US needs massive reforming. Let's not pretend the FBI is unique. I don't think it is cool cause they go after whoever. I'm apolitical for the most part. I'm just pointing out the obvious here. If you go to any popular alt-right channel they'll all be promoting getting rid of the FBI.
Can we please not bring irrelevant modern "politics" into this? I explicitly set up my comment to avoid this non-issue. I am very much against the person you brought up for no reason. I am also very against the FBI because of what they did during Occupy and against other grassroots movements over the years. Things I have direct personal experience with the FBI being corrupt over.
It isn't irrelevant. There are active efforts by right-wing politicians and talking heads to discredit the FBI. I think legitimate discourse is good and am happy to have it, but cherry picking things to simply push an agenda doesn't help.
Honestly? I'll take it in a "broken clock is right twice a day" sort of way. I'm glad there's support for reforming the FBI from idiots as well as reasonable people now. The only downsides are the people that automatically take the opposite position of the idiots even when what the idiots are arguing for is correct (by accident).
You don't seem to grasp what "relevant" means, or what "non-issue" means. Trump's situation is, obviously, directly relevant, and it's most certainly an issue.
Trump fans want to get rid of the FBI because they served a warrant against Trump for violations of the Espionage Act and raided Mar-A-Lago.
That's literally it. As long as the Feds were just cracking the heads of black protestors and snatching brown people up out of their beds, Trumpists were hard-core thin blue line. But the Feds dared disturb their oshi and now the same Trumpists have gone full #ACAB
It's basic fascist ideology - loyalty to the leader above all, and belief that the leader is above the system.
> As long as the Feds were just cracking the heads of black protestors and snatching brown people up out of their beds, Trumpists were hard-core thin blue line.
The FBI are investigators, not traditional police; they aren't generally the ones people are talking about when they say "thin blue line". It wasn't the FBI cracking heads and "snatching brown people out of their beds." The phrase is a reaction to perceptions of widespread civic disorder and violent crime; it really has nothing to do with the FBI at all.
What needs to be done? The FBI agent is facing 20 years in prison over this. The fact you can charge, put on trial, and convict an FBI agent speaks volumes.
It's not 1920 anymore. The bulk of the FBI's case load could be handled by a much smaller agency who's only job is to facilitate and coordinate state law enforcement.
All the "states misbehaving" issues that some people think they need the FBI for are traditionally handled by the US Marshall service.
In a functional state the state police does that job.
In a solidly one-party state only the minority party gets prosecuted because the majority party will still win even if they look like corrupt buffoons. <insert Chicago joke here>
States enforce federal statutes all the time. They just frequently turn the prosecution over to the feds. There's no reason you local DA can't do that.
Only when the state statute coincidentally matches the federal statute, for crimes like bank robbery that are defined at the state and federal level.
If the state doesn't have a law against the crime (i.e. South Carolina has no laws regarding hate crimes [1], but the federal government does [2]), then federal prosecutors are responsible for prosecuting those. One can't escape prosecution for a federal crime because there is no state law against it. Prosecuting federal crimes at a local level is exactly why the regional US attorneys offices exist.
In the case in from the article, the crimes committed by the state Senator (wire fraud, money laundering, etc) are federal by definition, so a local DA isn't going to prosecute them anyways.
Organizations can create an environment which leads to people overlooking or even committing those crimes. It's self-sustaining after a while. It sounds crazy but the FBI practically gives weapons to wannabe domestic terrorists and goes "c'mon do a crime" so they can nab them.
If they were disbanded what would fill the void and how would we prevent the replacement from being corrupted assuming they were not corrupted already?
Another really creative and novel idea might be, perhaps we could try having a liberal Democrat run the FBI occasionally, or maybe even just once in its entire history.
Check the facts: there has never once been a Democrat in charge of the FBI. Not once. Not even the ones appointed by Democratic presidents; they have also all been Republicans.
Almost a century, and zero Democrats have ever run the FBI.
Yet if you look at the popular vote, the public has voted for Democrats to run the federal government continuously since the 1980s with only one exception (2004).
I believe this has some relevance to our situation.
This user has been a member of HN since 2010 and post s a lot so isn’t a bot farm, but his website is in his profile and gives context on this type of opinion.
No, that is treating the symptoms. The FBI is hardly the only law enforcement or other government organisation breaking the law or trampling people's rights. Banning one organisation isn't going to fix the underlying problem, unless you plan to ban absolutely everything, which would be terrible.
The right solution is transparency and accountability. Make sure power abuse gets punished, no matter how powerful the abuser.
> this should result in the defendant being automatically found not guilty
These knee-jerk reactions sound good in passing, and sometimes pass into law. In reality, you created a get out of jail card for the powerful. Plenty of people in law enforcement would wipe a drive if their family and debts were taken care of, even in face of prison.
Obviously there should be an exception to the exception that says that says the auto-exoneration doesn't happen if the accused conspired to destroy the evidence.
I think it's a great idea not to do the first thing you think of, and instead to think of alternatives before committing to a solution. But I'm scratching my head here trying to think, what are good alternatives? Are you suggesting we send their family to jail too?
I mean honestly, what do we do here? Let them keep their job, pensions, and what ever hush money their received?
If this isn't a crime that sends you to jail, then I'm a little at a loss here.
I understand, but doesn't a wiped drive create reasonable doubt? Maybe there isn't even the need for a special law about this, just use reasonable doubt. I also have the feeling that there already are laws/case law about what to do in case of illegally destroyed (potential) evidence, we just don't know about it because we're not lawyers.
It does and it was. The defendant appealed, they figured out what was on the drive independently, and the evidence was weighed against him. This article is catnip for amplifying reasonable anti-authoritarianism into a general distrust of laws and justice.
Allegedly corrupt state Senator claims exculpatory evidence on a wiped drive. Weigh what could have been there, benefit of doubt to the defendant, without doing anything automatically.
> Plenty of people in law enforcement would wipe a drive if their family and debts were taken care of, even in face of prison.
This is beyond ridiculous:
(1) Someone in law enforcement that is in a position to meddle with the chain of evidence can already wipe incriminating evidence, which is already illegal. That would imply that the powerful already have a “get out of jail” card.
(2) There are a myriad of other places where corruption and bias can produce a “get out of jail” card, starting with who law enforcement chooses to investigate in the first place, and ending with who prosecutors decline to prosecute.
(3) Anyone in law enforcement is well-aware of just how horrific a place prison actually is, especially for someone previously in law-enforcement. Nobody is scrambling to wipe their debts to “take care of their family” while going to prison themselves.
> can already wipe incriminating evidence, which is already illegal. That would imply that the powerful already have a “get out of jail” card
We’re referencing a case where a state senator was convicted despite a drive (of potentially exculpatory evidence) being wiped. Then the guy who wiped the drive was caught and charged. So no.
OP suggested the defendant be “automatically found not guilty.” Not fruit of the poisoned tree, where evidence can’t be used. Automatic exoneration.
> myriad of other places where corruption and bias can produce a “get out of jail” card, starting with who law enforcement chooses to investigate in the first place
Nothing automatic. Also, this is why we have overlapping jurisdiction.
> law enforcement is well-aware of just how horrific a place prison actually is
LEO doesn’t get sent to standard prison, largely for safety reasons.
I couldn't find a news article stating this. I'm skeptical that a highly politicized and infamous former policeman would not be immediately shipped to PC at any prison he went to -- he or his lawyers would probably request it outright.
> We’re referencing a case where a state senator was convicted despite a drive (of potentially exculpatory evidence) being wiped. So no.
This senator was not powerful enough (or was actually honest enough) to not leverage the illegal “get out of jail” cards that already exist.
> OP suggested automatic not guilty for the defendant. Not fruit of the poisoned tree, where evidence can’t be used. Automatic exoneration.
What else are you going to do when potentially exculpatory evidence has been summarily wiped by the people responsible for maintaining the chain of evidence?
Force the accused to prove the wiped evidence was exculpatory?
You handle it in appeals, and the appeals court looks at the balance of the evidence weighed against the alleged exculpatory evidence and makes a decision?
> the balance of the evidence weighed against the alleged exculpatory evidence
Surely you see the fundamental problem, here. This shifts the burden of proof onto the defendant. Demonstrating the previous existence and, in particular, the exculpatory nature of destroyed evidence is practically impossible.
If the state directly conspires to an unfair trial, the state’s case must be forfeit.
That we’re ignoring all of the evidence that contributed to the case (and conviction, which was made after the wiped drive was discovered) outside one laptop?
Is the prevailing goal of our justice system to convict this one particular defendant, or to ensure that trials are as fair as possible for all defendants?
Yes. You are. Because ethics lapses by State actors who are empowered to such an asymmetric degree, demand it.
If exculpatory evidence is destroyed, adverse inference demands the court infer that that evidence be viewed in the worst light for the destroyer of the evidence, which in this case is the State. It really doesn't matter what was on that disk at this point. Now that the chain of evidence has been destroyed, we have to assume it truly was exculpatory.
Just as we'd assume a defendant destroying evidence would indicate it was so damning the jury should assume it was just the thing the State needed to prove their case.
Good of the goose, good of the gander. No self-referential inconsistency.
The destroyed drive was discovered before the trial started and there was a motion for dismissal that was made, appealed, and ultimately denied because
A. The evidence was available through other means
B. It was not strong enough to exculpate the defendant
[1]
I agree that taking a strong inference against actions of prosecution when evidence is destroyed and unrecoverable. However, in this case, that's not what happened. Evidence was destroyed, but it was also preserved in other locations (it was uploaded on dropbox).
Our court system, while weak in many areas, isn't terrible in this sort of circumstance. It doesn't take hard lines because things are tricky.
This sort of problem with evidence is made to come out of the regular court proceedings. It's why discovery happens before we start a trial.
Unfortunately in most cases the defendant is far too poor to afford to hire an attorney for an appeal. Justice very often relies on the contents of your bank account
My experience in USA with appeals is they only look at technical process, mis-application of case law, or "clear error". Constitutional issue can be raised, and will lose basically every time.
Any balance or weighing of evidence is in the lower court.
With the right amount of incentive, they could hire a lawyer to get them house arrest instead of prison time or a reduced prison time in a minimum security luxury prison.
True. Tho' I believe the arc of the point is...a system based on humans and human nature is subject to a wide range of questionable behaviours.
Just recently there was a judge - was it judges? - found guilty of sending kids to prison based on kickbacks received from the prison. And that, pardon the cliche, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Human behavior is both predictable and yet often bizarre.
Humans - you and me included - are far from perfect. A title or position does little to alter that. In fact, title and status breeds overconfidence and additional biases.
I'm not a cynical, simply realistic. We don't know about a fraction of the shit that goes down.
We don’t know what was on the drive, since it was wiped. We just know the agent says they had it wiped.
Creating a situation where bribing a law enforcement officer to claim to have destroyed evidence gets you out of a criminal charge automatically seems like a pretty problematic idea.
Better would be the inverse of the consequences when the defendant erases evidence - you just assume the destroyed evidence was whatever is worst for the prosecution and best for the defence.
>In reality, you created a get out of jail card for the powerful. Plenty of people in law enforcement would wipe a drive if their family and debts were taken care of, even in face of prison.
Good ole slippery slope. This is an insane take, tampering with evidence needs to have consequences, and unfortunately I'd rather let someone innocent go (even if that means sometimes guilty go free too). It's much worse to err on the side of let's kill / punish a few innocents.
They aren't saying tempering shouldn't have consequences. The person who did the tampering can still be punished. They are saying that, on top of that, having the other party have all charges removed in adding a bad incentive for certain people to want to tamper with evidence.
Yes it is, even if you can't see it. How is that person to defend themselves now? Talk about lack of empathy.
I highly doubt folks will do this "incentive" if we were to throw out the charges given there is punishment for the tampering. And if so (slippery slope case happens!) we can reconsider. But otherwise it's all rampant slippery slope thinking and baseless paranoia. It's absolutely ridiculous.
My knee-jerk reaction would include adding the sentence the accused was threatened with as a "bonus" to the standard sentence the rogue law enforcement officer would receive as punishment. That might add sufficient disincentive.
Depending on what and how the FBI screwed up, it's actually possible today. It's innocent until proven guilty, and if they screwed up in obtaining a key piece of evidence, then it and anything stemming from it will be inadmissible in court. If they can't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt without that evidence, then the defendant will be found not guilty.
Yes it does. Especially when the nature of the evidence is exculpatory, and was in the State's custody at time of the proceeding, and maliciously destroyed by a State actor. Adverse inference is a two way street. If you want to use it as justification to help the Prosecution when a Defendant destroys evidence, it must work the other way around as well. Due Process was thwarted.
Jones's case was civil, where the burden of proof and the penalties are remarkably different.
Had Jones's case been a criminal trial, the lawyer's screwup would have given Jones a powerful Fifth Amendment protection argument for excluding the relevant cell phone data from the trial. And anything that is found in that record is unlikely to be applicable to any criminal proceedings against Jones in the future (with the exception of perjury; I'm actually unclear on how a charge of perjury works in this circumstance when the Court is holding evidence provided by the defendant that the defendant perjured themselves).
> Cessario could possibly face 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, forfeiture of property involved in the criminal offense, and supervision upon release.
If he actually has to serve that kind of sentence, that really doesn't sound too lenient.
Those are the exact same maximum penalties for a single count of wire fraud. It's more lenient than the penalty for growing 50-99 marijuana plants (same jail time, fines go up to $1M) or selling 50-99kg of marijuana (same penalty as the cultivation). On the high end of the scale, sale or cultivation of marijuana includes life in prison.
Relative to other less serious crimes (in my opinion), this does seem fairly lenient. There aren't even mandatory minimums on it, unlike drug charges.
>This is a complete and unacceptable breach of the public trust, and of civil liberties.
I agree, and I hope the agent is sentenced harshly. However, given that this was a plea deal, I would expect him to get only a few years in jail. Although usually this is at the discretion of the judge.
But yes I think any LEOs should consider it not just a moral, ethical and legal violation of trust to do things like this, but to actively fear the consequences if they give in to the urge to cheat. In other words, a rational selfish person would NOT cheat because the EV is far too low.
People into conspiracies always comes with these kinds of slippery slope arguments. If this is wrong, then what more is wrong? It is an incorrect way of thinking. Evidence needs to be evaluated separately. Just because A is wrong does not prove anything about B.
Not the OP, understand and largely agree with your reasoning, though assuming there was a preponderance of evidence, why would someone only destroy a fraction of it knowing that doing so would be irrelevant, their efforts if discovered would be counter to their goals, and they would face significant penalties for doing so?
In this case though, the evidence wasn't proof of a crime. This was exculpatory evidence, the exact opposite. This seems just a bit more heinous than planting evidence for a conviction.
Because people are generally impulsive and irrational? The FBI agent in question sent some of the files, not all of them and then got called out by the judge, so he panicked and deleted the laptop. The prosecution didn't use any of the recordings at all, and proved their case with the existing evidence so it didn't really impact the case.
It's exculpatory evidence. I.e. if the Court was made aware of it, it would have undone their case.
This is exactly why adverse inference is a thing, and needs to be enforced to the hilt to exonerate, because otherwise, it doesn't disincent the State from doing the same thing in the future where they trade one of their own to really make a case stick.
The Court must symmetrically apply it's measures in disincenting pathologic behavior.
Meh.. there's nothing to say that the evidence was exculpatory. The FBI had the corrupt Senators co-conspirators, bank statements, text messages, fraudulent financial docs -- it could have impugned the government's cooperating witness who recorded the conversations. But the guy was obviously guilty and was convicted by a jury and the FBI agent is going to jail. Seems like a win-win with plenty of deterrence for other agents. No FBI agent is going to willingly throw away their career / pension / livelihood / years of their life to get a conviction "for the state".
You're not getting it. We could discuss this in a nuanced manner if the evidence existed, and could be weighed by the Court.
We no longer can, because the State, the very entity we bequeathe with the sole authority to conditionally suspend civil liberties in the condition of a proven beyond a reasonable doubt case, and the abscense of exculpatory evidence, destroyed it.
The Court must assume that that information was so damaging to the State's case, that even with all of the disincentives the legal system has to offer, a State agent committed the heinous crime of denying to the defense evidence lawfully subpoena'd.
If the Court does not exonerate, it's recognizing, and cutting law enforcement a check to undermine the rights of a defendant, and more importantly, their counsel, to lawfully surface potentially material exculpatory evidence by whoopsy-ing the material in question, and trading one of their own to make it stick.
This undermines everything the legal system has been predicated upon. This attacks the very integrity and independence of the American judiciary. No one is above the law. Especially the Government.
You may not like the defendant; I don't, but I like a rigged system even less. These are the cases that really test the mettle and integrity of the legal system, and the claim we live in a society subject to the rule of law.
It could be you in the same position. Don't even try that "Pah, never happen", because you don't know. That's why due process matters. This person was entitled to the same procedure as everyone else, and the State has willfully deprived him of it.
Nah, I get it fine, that’s why appeals exist. The judge in the defendant’s case already ruled on it and the obviously corrupt Sentator can appeal it further if he feels he’s still been wronged. The justice system is fault tolerant and unfortunately this isn’t actually even a novel problem. You’re partially right, the judge weighs exactly that question “If this evidence were exculpatory, how would it impact the case.” and the judge found that the destroyed evidence lacked exculpatory value due to the overwhelming amount of other evidence against him.
Which circles back to my original question, “assuming there was a preponderance of evidence, why would someone only destroy a fraction of it knowing that doing so would be irrelevant” - it makes no sense.
Also, at that point I had not read the ruling you referred to, which oddly clearly states the erased data was just a copy loaded to Dropbox; meaning the data exist in at least three places, one one of which is the one in question, that is the disk on the laptop that was erased by the agent. No explanation is provided of what happened to the other copies.
See “parties learned that a paralegal in Mr. Wilkinson's office named Karri Layton had uploaded the Neal recordings to a Dropbox account” here:
No, he was not. You don't seem to fundamentally understand what "due process" means. At all. Look it up:
"Due process is a requirement that legal matters be resolved according to established rules and principles, and that individuals be treated fairly."
The "established rules and principles" clearly and obviously were not followed, here. Therefore, by definition, and there can be no debate on this, there was no "due process", here.
I'm sure you think you're being very clever, but actually, you're not.
It's really quite clear here whether there was due process. Which is why a judge already ruled. Probably took about five seconds to figure this case out.
Without knowing if there was other evidence offered during the trial, it's unclear that the interests of justice are served by exonerating all defendants in cases where evidence is other than pristine.
The idea of transferring the sentence is funny, but probably not actually a good plan. The agent should be charged with whatever, tampering with evidence or something like that, which does have a pretty heavy punishment. The defendant should get a retrial at least.
The punishment for tampering with evidence should be strict no matter what the case was about. Whether the crime they are framing somebody for is murder or petty shoplifting, the main problem is the abuse of the public trust.
You do not seem to grasp the implications of exculpatory evidence being destroyed. A retrial would be a vindication of the corrupt prosecution - er, I mean, the corrupt law enforcement who was totally not an agent of the prosecution.
Sure--that's why the former FBI agent faces 20 years in prison. But why should that automatically lead to a finding of not guilty, ignoring the rest of the evidence?
I think there's a fair argument that the destruction of potentially exculpatory evidence creates per se reasonable doubt. I.e. there is no incriminating evidence that can remove any reasonable doubt that the exculpatory evidence may have proved their innocence.
Another issue is that due process has been broken in a way that can never be restored. I'm a little leery of continuing prosecution under those conditions, given that due process is the underpinning of a just legal system.
I have long said that attempting to frame someone should bring the same punishment the person would have faced if convicted. However, it shouldn't be automatic exoneration for the person who would have benefited. In this case it seems the attempt to destroy the data failed, the data was obtained and deemed insufficient to exonerate him. Handle it as we do in civil trials--missing evidence is presumed favorable to the other side. Now, usually that would result in an exoneration but it shouldn't be automatic--especially in cases like this where the attempt failed.
Put the shoe on the other foot and imagine a political leader who you detest having this done, if you want to try to find the line between "plausible opsec" and "plausible criminality."
The Federal Records Act disagrees. Everything should have been turned over to the responsible departments for record keeping, and letting them decide what should be destroyed and what should be preserved.
Seems like the tech to prevent this scenario exists, it’s just not being utilized. Is that because the-powers-that-be favor this scenario in the case they or their buddies need it?
I think I just understood the downvotes - nah I’m not insinuating that either party is more susceptible here. I’m suggesting people (more specifically leadership) being imperfect - and in some cases purposefully so.
For anyone wondering this was a political attack; the FBI agent was going after a pro-Trump Arkansas State Senator. The article doesn’t mention the FBI agent’s motive which is surprising given the context of this case plus other recent events with the FBI
It's The Gateway Pundit, there's nothing wrong with them. More importantly however is there's nothing in that article which isn't true, and it contains important context unlike the original article
Something can include facts but also extremely misleading. This "pro Trump" State Senator who the GP website is going to bat for was arrested for crimes he committed long before Trump was elected -- the kickbacks took place from 2012 - 2016, and his co-conspirators were other former State Senators who ratted him out. The FBI was interviewing his co-conspirators in October 2015 which is ~9 months before Trump won the GOP nomination and over a year before he was elected.
Tying 2015 activity by the Missouri field office of the FBI to some sort of FBI vendetta against people who supported Trump is the dumbest thing I've read in awhile, which is generally why nobody should read the Gateway Pundit.
Gateway Pundit is a propaganda outfit with a long history of pushing hoaxes, conspiracy theories and outright lies[1]. It’s possible that what you’re claiming is factual but you really need a reliable source.
I like Wikipedia for some things but you shouldn't forget it's a social media site where users (and people paid to influence politics) write articles. The most common IP addresses for editing articles are in Washington DC, and people who spend their lives editing articles aren't necessarily doing it for fun, they're doing it to influence things (in the same way Ghislaine Maxwell was an influential reddit mod)
Are you conceding that everything in that article's "False stories and conspiracy theories" section is true? Because I don't see you calling anything out as false.
The stuff in there is bad enough it makes The Gateway Pundit look like fake news regardless of the bias of the person(s) who wrote it (assuming it is true).
This article doesn't mention the FBI agent's motive either. Nor does it provide any evidence that this is a political attack; it's not like you can impute that solely from the fact that the target has a political stance.
It is a better article, if you can ignore the hyperbolic spin, in that it links to more information -- the fact this was known at the original trial, and the appeals court being quoted, "the evidence the agent destroyed lacked exculpatory value and the information was available by other means".
I sort of assume this is always happening to varying degrees. The net effect even for a skeptic is that you are less trusting of all media. Feels like a nearly unsolvable problem.
I think the public has always been skeptical of three-letter-agencies. Whether the recent outrage is a product of "natural" politics or some soviet-style "active measures" is anyone's guess
For me, the big surprise is the Republican party turning on the FBI. They have been the party of law an order for my whole life. Even recently, the back-the-blue rhetoric was mostly coming from the right and most of the right seemed to support law enforcement and the court system. I've always thought this way of thinking was fundamental to that party, but I guess not.
More like America is divided and there are people questioning the foundations who also happen to control media outlets that are on their side. That side also facing existential questions as their leader/mascot is being investigated.
There's been a lot of news about the FBI in a negative light, but it hasn't been "propaganda" and it hasn't been "suddenly". They've been rightfully exposed, complete with definitive proof, for doing many immoral, unethical, and downright illegal things for many years now. Hopefully they will be held accountable for their actions soon.
The fascists aren’t foreign: there are a lot of people who are outraged that the law is applying to people like them and that means these positions are getting a lot more airtime than they used to on right-wing media. Compare it to, say, the same guys’ positions about how the FBI should investigate BLM protesters to how they think the far more damaging January 6th attackers should be treated.
The FBI paints themselves in a negative light, over and over and over again. It really shouldn't surprise anyone that an institution that from the very start was doing backwards crap (just look at everything the FBI did to MLK and the civil rights movement).
There's no need to bring in outside influence to think negatively of the FBI - they've done it to themselves and if anything deserve far more scrutiny than they get.
Let's just say I don't have the tiniest shred of compassion for an organization that has Epsteins client list and not a single arrest has come from it.
As far as I'm concerned the FBI is a net-negative for this country by a long shot and their defunding and dissolution immediately would have next to zero negative impact and plenty of upside.
While these things come in waves, I think there has historically been a massive amount of effort and funding by US state agencies to show the CIA, FBI, and/or DoD in a positive light in mass media. Targeted leaks to "safe" journalists, high profile cable TV spots, op-eds that are written by department leaders, etc. That stuff still happens today. I agree that Russia is probably putting money and effort into sowing distrust in US institutions, but I think their capabilities are overrated, especially considering the funding and effort on the other side. Distrust in institutions is a global phenomenon now, with Brexit, Covid, Trump, Euroskepticism, war weariness over Ukraine, etc. But the FBI really doesn't have a great domestic track record and is called out every so often by all sides. Was this post influenced by a Russian campaign? https://twitter.com/aoc/status/953090887613140993
Isn’t Mark Milley the same general who bypassed the chain of command and removed civilian control of the military, then called a Chinese general assuring him he would “give a heads up” of any attack, and then bragged about all this to a reporter?
I’ve spent seven years listening to people complain about fascist orange man, and yet all the authoritarian policies that were introduced during that time (restrictions on freedom of movement, speech, association, etc) have come from democrat politicians.
Which party forced medical procedures on people who wanted to keep their job? Which party sends the federal police into the homes of its political opponents? Which party has been holding opposition protestors in prison without trial for over a year?
What is your hypothesis for why we disagree? Do you think I haven't read the same information you have? Do you think I read the same information, but came to wrong conclusions? Am I in some kind of echo chamber that results in self selecting reinforcement of my beliefs, so they are never challenged? Am I brainwashed by a college education? Am I just not smart enough to see the truth?
I'm legitimately curious, why do you think we disagree?
>Could a facist nation (ie: Russia) be using our news to minipulate journalism (again)?
I would argue that it's similar to what happens with a lot of major stories. Something happens, then people start seeing it everywhere even if it was always there. They just talk about it more because it's the topic of the day.
The FBI has always had a bad rap, and they are a somewhat fascistic org themselves. And I'm a full-blooded born in the USA American saying this. The FBI doesn't need any help from foreign nations to be portrayed negatively. Just look up COINTELPRO for one of many egregious examples. It's not just bad individuals, but multi-year supremacist programs.
More recently, they tried to force Apple to put a backdoor in their phones.
It's honestly kind of wild watching the political left do a total about face and embrace and celebrate the FBI while the law and order political right turns against them.
I'm getting almost as much whiplash as when the crunchy, anti-vax political left (remember the 2019 Portland measles outbreak?) turned rabidly and militantly pro-vax while the generally neutral conservative right turned extremely anti-vax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Pacific_Northwest_measles...
The FBI has been getting a free pass, if anything. Recently illegally spying on a presidential candidate's campaign (of the opposing party of the sitting president), and currently ignoring corruption involving the President's son and "The Big Guy" (hard to tell who that might be).
The surveillance in question targeted Carter Page specifically. There were FISA warrant applications with errors and omissions. Two of four warrants were eventually declared invalid in 2020. Special Counsel John Durham is investigating the investigation. So far it looks like he's produced one acquittal, and an upcoming trial against a Russian national, Igor Danchenko.
You need actual evidence Biden was involved in the situation. All there is right now is Hunter possibly referencing his father. This is on the level of "Russia, if you're listening..." except in that case we know an actual outcome that appears to have coincided with the call for action while the venture Hunter proposed never occurred.
I think it's a lot easier to manipulate social media than journalism. Stories like this one will always exist because the world is a huge place. On an average day they just get buried in the avalanche of information we have available. It only takes social media manipulation to make sure the stories you want to resurrect and get engagement rise to the top.
You'd have to argue that Hacker News has been invaded by foreign actors trying to manipulate this specific audience, which is plausible I suppose but I haven't seen any evidence for it just yet.
It’s funny how they are bringing these charges when the trust in FBI is an all time low and now FBI (if it wasn’t after the whole Peter Strozk incident) is seen as a political operative for ruling elites in Washington.
> how they are bringing these charges when the trust in FBI is an all time low
The FBI agent is pleading guilty. These wheels have long been turning.
The only part relevant to the present situation is the editorial discretion and social amplification putting an…ABC 7 KATV? Yes, that article on the HN front page. It’s topical, it gets clicks, it gets upvotes.
What's funny is how one political party thinks the FBI is acting politically right now but argued otherwise 1 President ago. Turns out people just hate it when the law comes for them.
In my view they really were acting politically one president ago. Just read the wikipedia on James Comey. It's pretty difficult to argue that he wasn't using his position for a political agenda with every action while the Director of the FBI.
For those not in the know- James Comey told Congress about Hillary Clinton's emails mere days before the election. I think that it would have looked political if they withheld until after the election too. The less political move is to treat the emails no different than anything else.
> treat the emails no different than anything else
It seems that did not happen[0] (emphasis mine):
> On October 26, 2016, two weeks before the presidential election, Comey learned that FBI agents investigating an unrelated case involving former congressman Anthony Weiner had discovered emails on Weiner's computer between his wife, Huma Abedin, and Hillary Clinton. Claiming he believed it would take months to review Weiner's emails, Comey decided he had to inform Congress that the investigation was being reopened due to new information. Justice Department lawyers warned him that giving out public information about an investigation was inconsistent with department policy, but he considered the policy to be "guidance" rather than an ironclad rule. He decided that to not reveal the new information would be misleading to Congress and the public. On October 28, Comey sent a letter to members of Congress advising them that the FBI was reviewing more emails.
When has the FBI _not_ been acting politically? At least by the time of J Edgar Hoover, it was a strong arm to enforce the political goals of the administration. Robert Mueller and James Comey continued this tradition albeit with a bit less personal gusto.
> bringing these charges when the trust in FBI is an all time low and now FBI
Citations please.
Weird that you would say this like a fact, it really isn't the case. It is a smaller proportion of the population that is trying to cast doubt and trying to normalize this suspicion.
I think you meant Strzok, NOT Strozk. Did you read his book? Actually great read. Dude, like anyone else had his own opinions, unless you believe FBI agent are cyborgs and have no right to be humans, have their own personal opinions, etc. and was sharing it with his private connections. He was on a power trip but there was no power that he could actually use to corrupt. Hence, even if he said he will stop Trump for winning, as you know - he did not do so, because he way just showing off. I'm not defending him as a decent FBI agent, seems he was not, but also his position like many other people (Clinton, Soros, etc) has been blown out of proportion by Maga/Alt-right.
The FBI was a political dirty tricks agency from its first days. J E Hoover kept dossiers on all public officials to use coercing them. First priority was always getting coninued funding and absolute autonomy for the FBI and Hoover. But next in priority was whatever the hell Hoover wanted. He may have taken his dossiers to the grave; there is no way to know. But they certainly still keep them.
The FBI forensic lab for its whole existence went out of their way to falsify testimony on samples they were sent, implicating or exonerating according to what whoever sent them wanted.
Their "most-wanted list" was always a political PR instrument: they put on it whoever they were about to arrest, just so they would seem successful, effective, and deserving of increased funding.
Now whoever runs it inherits all their institutional power.
Misbehavior of people in the justice system should be viewed as one of the worst crimes. These people have enormous power over people’s lives and should therefore be held to the highest standards. There are so many cases of detectives falsifying evidence or bribing witnesses, prosecutors hiding evidence and often they get away with this for decades without any consequences.
The major of my city is a proven liar. She was elected nonetheless. The president of my country seems to be somehow more or less losely involved in fraud at enourmous scales. He was elected nonetheless. I feel like people stopped caring long ago. And by now we seem to have only the choice between different liars and fraudsters at the voting bill. Maybe this was always like this. But I often wonder: How did we get such beautiful democratic systems (in some european countries at least, and yes I know it's not perfect) if not by much more competent and ethically intact politicians? I try to understand, but I have a hard time.
Had a feeling I would see Chomsky in the comments, this is a classic example of how intelligence agencies are a tool of the ruling class, history has shown they rarely ever bite the hand that feeds them, unless it's for self preservation.
The voters need to have easy access to more information about their electable officials. How would the average person know that your city official is a proven liar?
It doesn't matter one iota. He could have waterboarded Mother Theresa for all I care.
Due. Process. Them you can abscond with liberties. No due process, no absconding with liberties. Destroying evidence, especially exculpatory evidence is the System placing itself above it's mandate from the People as laid out in the Constitution.
If you want to imprison someone, you prove your case, maintain all evidence, and investigate every instance of exculpatory evidence you can.
It is not the job of Law Enforcement to secure a conviction. It is their job to see Justice done to the best of their ability. If they violate that mandate by destroying exculpatory evidence, they vacate their authority to imprison.
The scales of Justice demand this bias. Otherwise you've equipped the State with carte blanche to lock up and keep locked up anyone they like.
Due Process. It means something. You may not sympathize with the person, but it is critically important that we hold the edifices of power to maximal account.
The supposed guilt (assuming you reference that as a "look how obviously guilty he is!") of a person is independent of the fact that destruction of evidence by the government is a violation of due process...
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 292 ms ] threadIn the case in question, the defendant (a state Senator) requested the laptop that contained the hard drive for examination, because it would contain evidence that they believed would demonstrate their innocence. The FBI agent was ordered to produce the laptop and did so -- but only after first purchasing and using a forensic disk-wiping service.
According to the article, the defendant is a former state senator, not a current or former US Senator. Otherwise good quote and summary!
https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-woods-260
Does anyone understand why one FBI is helping a senator?
The FBI started investigating a kickback scheme from a State Senator (Jon Woods) who was steering contracts to a small school in exchange for cash and payments to a nonprofit he ran from school administrators. They quickly 'flipped' one of the admins at the school (Micah Neal) who agreed to provide evidence to the FBI in exchange for a guilty plea and reduction in his own sentence.
Neal offered to start recording conversations with Woods, but the FBI told him they didn't want him to / need him to (presumably because they had enough written evidence and financial detail to make the case). Neal recorded 119 conversations anyway and gave them to the FBI.
When the DOJ indicted Woods, his attorneys would be given all investigative material and the FBI agent in question sent him 39 audio files. Woods' attorney realized there were missing files, so he had the court force the FBI to turn over the rest of them, and that's when the FBI agent went out and erased the laptop.
Reading between the lines - the FBI agent probably sent the most 'damning' recordings, left out anything that would impugn their witness, and then panicked when he realized he was caught. The DOJ didn't use the recordings at trial and hadn't asked for them, so I suspect there was no greater motive in the deletion than trying to preserve the conviction/investigative effort.
Corrupt Senator wasting taxpayer money goes to jail, bad FBI agent goes to jail, all seems fine in the end.
Sending a TRIM request would do the job (or, generally speaking, just deleting the files). There is no reachable slack on SSD drives.
The most secure way to erase an SSD is write just insane amounts to it, and then put it through a ballistics test with a 1911 and then throw the remaining parts into Mt Doom.
Grab some popcorn, or tune it out. YMMV.
An often-abusive organization can be tasked with investigating deeply corrupt people, and we don't need to pick a side and declare them the good guys out of tribal loyalty.
We do if we want to have some veneer of ideological consistency to our calls to send the feds after groups X, Y and Z (values of X, Y and Z vary over time) that aren't very bad in the grand scheme of things but whom we want to be marginalized anyway. Reconciling the evil that goes on under the guise of federal law enforcement with throwing ever increasing resources at them to chase this year's boogeyman is beyond the reach of all but the most skilled mental gymnasts so people just call them the good guys because that's easier and doesn't run the risk of you having to defend a nuanced position.
Edit: I do not think the FBI (or most of federal law enforcement for that matter) should exist in their current capacity, but the above is how it appears many people's opinion of the FBI has been formed and that should make a lot of people here uncomfortable.
I do like the way the FBI is used to infiltrate extreme right wing groups of the present day. But that doesn't make me think that the FBI are the good guys.
The point is that the role of the FBI has to be considered on a case by case basis. They are neither the good/bad guys because they infiltrated the Weather Underground or SDS in the 60s, and they are not the good/bad guys because they are infiltrating right wing groups today. Likewise, just because Hoover used them for his own personal vendettas - incontrovertibly - doesn't make them a priori the good or the bad guys. The same is true in reverse: none of the groups are a priori the good or bad guys because they've been investigated or infiltrated by the FBI.
BTW, the vast majority of the organizations the FBI infiltrated between 1963 and 1976 were non-violent and dedicated to peace.
Some of us think that people we vehemently disagree with deserve to have their rights upheld and be subject to due process.
The real tragedy is that people like you who don't believe in equality under law poison the well for the rest of us. In a world where you people are happy to enable slimy things to get your way everyone else must behave similarly or be at a disadvantage.
If your chosen anonymous identity were tied to persistent effort, one could validate, but in the absence of that, you could just use arbitrarily many "throwaway" accounts that all claim ideological consistency on as many issues as desired. Any claims to ideological consistency are therefore of zero value.
It's like me claiming that I have given away $10 billion today to charity.
Let's think of an example: "Why do you think people cannot see through your attempt at manipulation?"
That’s also an oversimplification of what’s known about the Whitney plot, too. The state and second federal trial are still pending:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
In regards to Whitmer, without the feds inciting the idiots in the group, none of this happens. A federal jury already failed to convict several members, so the "justice" system is going to keep retrying until they succeed. This is all a sham.
You won't find any evidence of a superior force opening the gates. One commonly shown video of an officer waving protestors past was actually him signalling for other officers to pull out of the crowd and the officers were clearly outnumbered in that situation.
I really have a hard time with comments like these. It's hard to believe it's just ignorance nearly two years later.
January 6th was a bunch of people with unbreakable faith (some still even after) to a grifter of a magnitude not seen in this country for as long as I'm aware of. He told them to go to the capitol, and that he would go with them. I watched as a horde of people were practically escorted around, having barriers and gates opened up for them, and police allowing protestors to take selfies with them.
After that, the man who told his followers to go to the capitol couldn't even muster any support or pardons for them.
If you are going to say that there was no federal collusion here, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
That seems like a fair assessment.
My point was to reinforce GP's stating that you don't need to pick sides. You need to examine particular situations on a case-by-case basis, rather than coming to some sort of simplistic catch-all description such as "the FBI are the bad guys" or "everyone the FBI investigates are the bad guys".
This is hardly an isolated incident either, so I don't see anything untoward about discussing a pattern of corrupt behavior coming out of the FBI that dates back decades, and calling them out on this malfeasance.
Also, you can try to backpedal all you want. In the original comment of yours that I questioned, you indeed implied that you didn't care about FBI corruption as long as the target is someone you don't like. Your words were pretty clear, so I have a hard time believing that you didn't mean exactly what you said.
I would argue the opposite.
Ideology generally doesn't mean you should pick a side and stick with it all the time.
For example I can disagree with the FBI one day based on my ideology, and agree the next based on my ideology. The FBI is an institution made up of people who make various choices, not an ideology.
I get that this could go down a rabbit hole of definitions and so on but that's my approach generally, to a lot of things.
This isn't evidence that makes the defendant guiltier...but could be a factual finding that blows open the case meaning ya got the wrong guy, or the guy is still guilty, but not the end of the story.
If it were evaluated and available to the Court, a more nuanced discussion could be had of the ramifications on the case. The State destroyed it, however, introducing adverse inference.
This usually comes coupled, when a defendant does it, of causing the Prosecution to become entitled to having the Judge instruct the Jury to see the destroyed evidence in the worst light possible. Seeing as it was the State doing it, that would imply the Court must take that evidence as nothing less than completely undermining the State's original case.
If you aren't willing to throw a guilty man on the streets to make damn sure your LE edifice doesn't put the innocent in harm's way, wtf are you doing as a Court System? It sure isn't justice.
> Something like this should result in the defendant being automatically found not guilty, and the agent sent to jail for the maximum sentence the defendant was facing. This is a complete and unacceptable breach of the public trust, and of civil liberties.
Now, it is a nexus of power that is prone to abuse. (Be sure to check out the lingerie display in the Hoover Building if you visit.) And I do think it needs some reforms - oversight, control and sunlight are sorely lacking. Just like the rest of US LE, they need to be far better-controlled.
https://ij.org/issues/project-on-immunity-and-accountability...
The FBI has always selectively targeted politicians going back to J Edgar Hoover, and the entire organization has political corruption in its founding and DNA.
The FBI was founded to go after politicians. Add in prosecutorial discretion and such an organisation will always be charged with selective enforcement. One of their first cases was prosecuting a murderer of wealthy Indians in Oklahoma the locals ignored [1]. Yes, it has a troubled history. But I haven’t seen a great argument for what could replace it as our nation’s anti-corruption and major crimes force.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/books/review/killers-of-t...
A DOJ lawyer admitted to altering contents of an email to make it say the opposite of what it originally said. https://www.google.com/search?q=doj+lawyer+admits+to+alterin...
Recently 2 of the 4 defendants were acquitted and 2 were declared a mistrial because the FBI was shown to have played a key part in the actual planning. https://www.google.com/search?q=michigan+governor+kidnapping...
Illegal spying on American citizens https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+illegally+spied+on+ameri...
How has someone been convicted of trafficking children, yet the FBI and DOJ have not released any of the names or charged any of their clients? Everything else seem to leak out right away.
There are plenty more examples. Take a look at some of the OIG reports that have come out in the last 10 years if you want a real in depth look.
There is something wrong with our FBI and DOJ and it needs to be rooted out. I agree with you regarding the replacement but at the same time we cannot pretend its actual doing anti-corruption or major crimes work fairly. Both organizations selectively chooses who to go after based on the employees personal feelings. That is not okay. That is not justice.
Yes, right now it's trendy to be pro-FBI since they are going after Trump, and Trump bad. However, the FBI routinely violates civil rights and like any police organization attracts bad actors and will abuse it's power to the extent it is not prevented from doing so.
> The laptop became an issue when it was used to copy audio recordings the government says it never sought.
> Neal, a former state representative of Springdale, carried an audio recorder disguised as a pen during most of 2016. He was cooperating with the government and told investigators he was willing to wear a hidden recording device. Investigators declined, but Neal went ahead and recorded any conversation he thought might interest investigators. He said he hoped he could be of more value to the government and reduce his sentence. He pleaded guilty on Jan. 4, 2017.
> Cessario used his FBI laptop to make copies of the audio files after they were placed in a Dropbox file-sharing folder. He testified in a February court hearing he copied every file that was there and copied them to computer disc in November 2016. Copies of those recordings were turned over to the defense in April 2017.
> According to court testimony, not all the files were in the Dropbox folder the day Cessario downloaded the files and then made his copies. For whatever reason, only 39 of at least 119 audio files made it to the defense. Recorded conversations specifically mentioned in texts from Neal's attorney to Cessario in 2016 were not there.
> Cessario was ordered Dec. 4 in an email from Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Jennen to turn over the laptop for examination to try and find out what happened. That same day Cessario had the hard drive professionally erased at a computer shop in Bentonville, then erased it again himself before turning it in on Dec. 7, he testified in a pretrial hearing Jan. 25.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca8/18...
In otherwords, the evidence wasn't strong enough to overturn the conviction and was available through other means.
The engineer from the car company fudging its pollution data, Jefferey Epstein, Child trafficking rings of the high and mighty, stock market frauds, and the list goes on.
This is true across the world to a degree.
All this technology, laws, systems, institutions, people, moral education, increased awareness and everything modern has not moved the society a lot in any positive direction. Just wobbling around a point, swinging temporarily around the corrupt core.
In fairness, there also hasn't been much development of proactively moral technology, moreso reactively moral i.e. detective and responsive.
To wit:
> According to court testimony, not all the files were in the Dropbox folder the day Cessario downloaded the files and then made his copies. For whatever reason, only 39 of at least 119 audio files made it to the defense. Recorded conversations specifically mentioned in texts from Neal's attorney to Cessario in 2016 were not there.
> Cessario was ordered Dec. 4 in an email from Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Jennen to turn over the laptop for examination to try and find out what happened. That same day Cessario had the hard drive professionally erased at a computer shop in Bentonville, then erased it again himself before turning it in on Dec. 7, he testified in a pretrial hearing Jan. 25.
Audit trails and forensic tech all over the place surfaced it, which theory holds should be a dissuasive factor on future corruption. Time will tell though; moral and immoral tech and moral/immoral implementations of tech are in a runaway arms race.
Their comment relates to a corrupt and entitled elite, which has come to exist in most societies down through history. The trick is to peacefully cycle the elite out of power before they become corrupt, because it seems that most humans will become corrupt, given the opportunity.
Corrupt FBI agent gets caught. How does even this cue choirs of nihilism?
You're treating the symptoms, the leaf nodes. The FBI is a criminal organization with a long history, that should be abolished outright.
/s
It would be logistically and all around easier to replace the corrupt FBI and it's culture than these two attempts by entire nations at replacing their corrupt police forces.
It is needed. Not because of anything that's happened the last couple years, but because the FBI has been run and staffed by criminals for decades.
This was true from it's earliest days when it was pulling dirty tricks on civil rights and anti war protestors.
Thinking this kind of things is cool when it's used against your political opponents is incredibly short sighted.
That's literally it. As long as the Feds were just cracking the heads of black protestors and snatching brown people up out of their beds, Trumpists were hard-core thin blue line. But the Feds dared disturb their oshi and now the same Trumpists have gone full #ACAB
It's basic fascist ideology - loyalty to the leader above all, and belief that the leader is above the system.
The FBI are investigators, not traditional police; they aren't generally the ones people are talking about when they say "thin blue line". It wasn't the FBI cracking heads and "snatching brown people out of their beds." The phrase is a reaction to perceptions of widespread civic disorder and violent crime; it really has nothing to do with the FBI at all.
Of course you do. Let's be outraged over them serving zero time before they are even sentenced.
All the "states misbehaving" issues that some people think they need the FBI for are traditionally handled by the US Marshall service.
* It’s not the 1920s, there aren’t large criminal organizations anymore
* The FBI in 2022 is a large criminal organization
"The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”"
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list...
Happy now?
What smaller agency would take on a corrupt state Senator in Missouri?
In a solidly one-party state only the minority party gets prosecuted because the majority party will still win even if they look like corrupt buffoons. <insert Chicago joke here>
If the specific crimes are Federal as it was in this case, then the Federal law enforcement agency must get involved.
Otherwise your argument reduces to "there should be no Federal laws against wire fraud, honest services fraud, and money laundering"
Only when the state statute coincidentally matches the federal statute, for crimes like bank robbery that are defined at the state and federal level.
If the state doesn't have a law against the crime (i.e. South Carolina has no laws regarding hate crimes [1], but the federal government does [2]), then federal prosecutors are responsible for prosecuting those. One can't escape prosecution for a federal crime because there is no state law against it. Prosecuting federal crimes at a local level is exactly why the regional US attorneys offices exist.
In the case in from the article, the crimes committed by the state Senator (wire fraud, money laundering, etc) are federal by definition, so a local DA isn't going to prosecute them anyways.
1. https://apnews.com/article/ahmaud-arbery-columbia-south-caro...
2. https://www.justice.gov/crt/hate-crime-laws
We must assume that people are fallible, corruption is possible, and that we therefore need a means of redress when such corruption occurs.
Strong public accountability and transparency. Actual "rule of law" without social or political bias as the first tenant.
The FBI really does have a very sordid history. Perhaps they can be reformed though, not sure.
Check the facts: there has never once been a Democrat in charge of the FBI. Not once. Not even the ones appointed by Democratic presidents; they have also all been Republicans.
Almost a century, and zero Democrats have ever run the FBI.
Yet if you look at the popular vote, the public has voted for Democrats to run the federal government continuously since the 1980s with only one exception (2004).
I believe this has some relevance to our situation.
The right solution is transparency and accountability. Make sure power abuse gets punished, no matter how powerful the abuser.
These knee-jerk reactions sound good in passing, and sometimes pass into law. In reality, you created a get out of jail card for the powerful. Plenty of people in law enforcement would wipe a drive if their family and debts were taken care of, even in face of prison.
If this isn't a crime that sends you to jail, then I'm a little at a loss here.
Allegedly corrupt state Senator claims exculpatory evidence on a wiped drive. Weigh what could have been there, benefit of doubt to the defendant, without doing anything automatically.
> this isn't a crime that sends you to jail
The FBI agent is going to jail. Per the article.
This is beyond ridiculous:
(1) Someone in law enforcement that is in a position to meddle with the chain of evidence can already wipe incriminating evidence, which is already illegal. That would imply that the powerful already have a “get out of jail” card.
(2) There are a myriad of other places where corruption and bias can produce a “get out of jail” card, starting with who law enforcement chooses to investigate in the first place, and ending with who prosecutors decline to prosecute.
(3) Anyone in law enforcement is well-aware of just how horrific a place prison actually is, especially for someone previously in law-enforcement. Nobody is scrambling to wipe their debts to “take care of their family” while going to prison themselves.
We’re referencing a case where a state senator was convicted despite a drive (of potentially exculpatory evidence) being wiped. Then the guy who wiped the drive was caught and charged. So no.
OP suggested the defendant be “automatically found not guilty.” Not fruit of the poisoned tree, where evidence can’t be used. Automatic exoneration.
> myriad of other places where corruption and bias can produce a “get out of jail” card, starting with who law enforcement chooses to investigate in the first place
Nothing automatic. Also, this is why we have overlapping jurisdiction.
> law enforcement is well-aware of just how horrific a place prison actually is
LEO doesn’t get sent to standard prison, largely for safety reasons.
In the US they do. Look at Derek Chauvin. He got assaulted on day one.
This senator was not powerful enough (or was actually honest enough) to not leverage the illegal “get out of jail” cards that already exist.
> OP suggested automatic not guilty for the defendant. Not fruit of the poisoned tree, where evidence can’t be used. Automatic exoneration.
What else are you going to do when potentially exculpatory evidence has been summarily wiped by the people responsible for maintaining the chain of evidence?
Force the accused to prove the wiped evidence was exculpatory?
This can always be claimed about anything, both ways.
> What else are you going to do when potentially exculpatory evidence has been summarily wiped by the people
Look at the other evidence in appeal. (The defendant is appealing [1].)
[1] https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2018/sep/05/sentence-in-woods...
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca8/18...
Surely you see the fundamental problem, here. This shifts the burden of proof onto the defendant. Demonstrating the previous existence and, in particular, the exculpatory nature of destroyed evidence is practically impossible.
If the state directly conspires to an unfair trial, the state’s case must be forfeit.
That we’re ignoring all of the evidence that contributed to the case (and conviction, which was made after the wiped drive was discovered) outside one laptop?
If exculpatory evidence is destroyed, adverse inference demands the court infer that that evidence be viewed in the worst light for the destroyer of the evidence, which in this case is the State. It really doesn't matter what was on that disk at this point. Now that the chain of evidence has been destroyed, we have to assume it truly was exculpatory.
Just as we'd assume a defendant destroying evidence would indicate it was so damning the jury should assume it was just the thing the State needed to prove their case.
Good of the goose, good of the gander. No self-referential inconsistency.
A. The evidence was available through other means
B. It was not strong enough to exculpate the defendant
[1]
I agree that taking a strong inference against actions of prosecution when evidence is destroyed and unrecoverable. However, in this case, that's not what happened. Evidence was destroyed, but it was also preserved in other locations (it was uploaded on dropbox).
Our court system, while weak in many areas, isn't terrible in this sort of circumstance. It doesn't take hard lines because things are tricky.
This sort of problem with evidence is made to come out of the regular court proceedings. It's why discovery happens before we start a trial.
[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca8/18...
In this case they’re an elected official who siphoned six figures out of state funds.
My experience in USA with appeals is they only look at technical process, mis-application of case law, or "clear error". Constitutional issue can be raised, and will lose basically every time.
Any balance or weighing of evidence is in the lower court.
What fruit do you discard after somebody destroys the data that tells what tree was poisoned?
Just recently there was a judge - was it judges? - found guilty of sending kids to prison based on kickbacks received from the prison. And that, pardon the cliche, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Human behavior is both predictable and yet often bizarre.
But is it just the tip of the iceberg? Or are these things highly publicized when they happen because they are rare?
I'm not a cynical, simply realistic. We don't know about a fraction of the shit that goes down.
Creating a situation where bribing a law enforcement officer to claim to have destroyed evidence gets you out of a criminal charge automatically seems like a pretty problematic idea.
https://pds.wv.gov/attorney-and-staff-resources/research-cen...
How do you feel about the NSA?
This has nothing to do with slippery slopes.
I highly doubt folks will do this "incentive" if we were to throw out the charges given there is punishment for the tampering. And if so (slippery slope case happens!) we can reconsider. But otherwise it's all rampant slippery slope thinking and baseless paranoia. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Let's say someone kills a relative of mine, the FBI dorks something up ... they should go free by default even if otherwise can be proven guilty?
I don't think that makes sense / that's not justice.
So now you potentially go to trial with that evidence.
"This isn't fair to me."
"I propose a solution that isn't fair to everyone else ..."
Had Jones's case been a criminal trial, the lawyer's screwup would have given Jones a powerful Fifth Amendment protection argument for excluding the relevant cell phone data from the trial. And anything that is found in that record is unlikely to be applicable to any criminal proceedings against Jones in the future (with the exception of perjury; I'm actually unclear on how a charge of perjury works in this circumstance when the Court is holding evidence provided by the defendant that the defendant perjured themselves).
If he actually has to serve that kind of sentence, that really doesn't sound too lenient.
Those are the exact same maximum penalties for a single count of wire fraud. It's more lenient than the penalty for growing 50-99 marijuana plants (same jail time, fines go up to $1M) or selling 50-99kg of marijuana (same penalty as the cultivation). On the high end of the scale, sale or cultivation of marijuana includes life in prison.
Relative to other less serious crimes (in my opinion), this does seem fairly lenient. There aren't even mandatory minimums on it, unlike drug charges.
I agree, and I hope the agent is sentenced harshly. However, given that this was a plea deal, I would expect him to get only a few years in jail. Although usually this is at the discretion of the judge.
But yes I think any LEOs should consider it not just a moral, ethical and legal violation of trust to do things like this, but to actively fear the consequences if they give in to the urge to cheat. In other words, a rational selfish person would NOT cheat because the EV is far too low.
This is exactly why adverse inference is a thing, and needs to be enforced to the hilt to exonerate, because otherwise, it doesn't disincent the State from doing the same thing in the future where they trade one of their own to really make a case stick.
The Court must symmetrically apply it's measures in disincenting pathologic behavior.
You're not getting it. We could discuss this in a nuanced manner if the evidence existed, and could be weighed by the Court.
We no longer can, because the State, the very entity we bequeathe with the sole authority to conditionally suspend civil liberties in the condition of a proven beyond a reasonable doubt case, and the abscense of exculpatory evidence, destroyed it.
The Court must assume that that information was so damaging to the State's case, that even with all of the disincentives the legal system has to offer, a State agent committed the heinous crime of denying to the defense evidence lawfully subpoena'd.
If the Court does not exonerate, it's recognizing, and cutting law enforcement a check to undermine the rights of a defendant, and more importantly, their counsel, to lawfully surface potentially material exculpatory evidence by whoopsy-ing the material in question, and trading one of their own to make it stick.
This undermines everything the legal system has been predicated upon. This attacks the very integrity and independence of the American judiciary. No one is above the law. Especially the Government.
You may not like the defendant; I don't, but I like a rigged system even less. These are the cases that really test the mettle and integrity of the legal system, and the claim we live in a society subject to the rule of law.
It could be you in the same position. Don't even try that "Pah, never happen", because you don't know. That's why due process matters. This person was entitled to the same procedure as everyone else, and the State has willfully deprived him of it.
Also, at that point I had not read the ruling you referred to, which oddly clearly states the erased data was just a copy loaded to Dropbox; meaning the data exist in at least three places, one one of which is the one in question, that is the disk on the laptop that was erased by the agent. No explanation is provided of what happened to the other copies.
See “parties learned that a paralegal in Mr. Wilkinson's office named Karri Layton had uploaded the Neal recordings to a Dropbox account” here:
https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-woods-260
"Due process is a requirement that legal matters be resolved according to established rules and principles, and that individuals be treated fairly."
The "established rules and principles" clearly and obviously were not followed, here. Therefore, by definition, and there can be no debate on this, there was no "due process", here.
It's really quite clear here whether there was due process. Which is why a judge already ruled. Probably took about five seconds to figure this case out.
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/16/archives/us-forgoes-trial...
I don't think this is even a hard case, legally. The government had relevant evidence & destroyed it deliberately. Not guilty.
The punishment for tampering with evidence should be strict no matter what the case was about. Whether the crime they are framing somebody for is murder or petty shoplifting, the main problem is the abuse of the public trust.
You do not seem to grasp the implications of exculpatory evidence being destroyed. A retrial would be a vindication of the corrupt prosecution - er, I mean, the corrupt law enforcement who was totally not an agent of the prosecution.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/adverse-inference/
Given the evidence was exculpatory in nature, the court must assume the worst of it's impact on the State's case.
Another issue is that due process has been broken in a way that can never be restored. I'm a little leery of continuing prosecution under those conditions, given that due process is the underpinning of a just legal system.
I see.
I have long said that attempting to frame someone should bring the same punishment the person would have faced if convicted. However, it shouldn't be automatic exoneration for the person who would have benefited. In this case it seems the attempt to destroy the data failed, the data was obtained and deemed insufficient to exonerate him. Handle it as we do in civil trials--missing evidence is presumed favorable to the other side. Now, usually that would result in an exoneration but it shouldn't be automatic--especially in cases like this where the attempt failed.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-hillary-clinton-aide-des...
EDIT:
Apparently a lot of people think the FBI is completely above board when dealing with more important pigs.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/19/think-the-fbi-deserves-...
Edit: zdragnar is correct that the phones should probably have fallen under Federal Records Act handling.
Here’s a better article on the topic https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/fbi-agent-pleads-gu...
Tying 2015 activity by the Missouri field office of the FBI to some sort of FBI vendetta against people who supported Trump is the dumbest thing I've read in awhile, which is generally why nobody should read the Gateway Pundit.
There is actually a great deal wrong with them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit#False_stori...
1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit
The stuff in there is bad enough it makes The Gateway Pundit look like fake news regardless of the bias of the person(s) who wrote it (assuming it is true).
It is a better article, if you can ignore the hyperbolic spin, in that it links to more information -- the fact this was known at the original trial, and the appeals court being quoted, "the evidence the agent destroyed lacked exculpatory value and the information was available by other means".
- John Corry
Btw I'm sure it's a two way street.
Doesnt take much to put two and two together.
There's no need to bring in outside influence to think negatively of the FBI - they've done it to themselves and if anything deserve far more scrutiny than they get.
They also have the biggest targets and the ones that fight the hardest against their job.
But guess what, if those agencies are "big and bad", it's because so are their targets. And even then sometimes they lose
As far as I'm concerned the FBI is a net-negative for this country by a long shot and their defunding and dissolution immediately would have next to zero negative impact and plenty of upside.
I’ve spent seven years listening to people complain about fascist orange man, and yet all the authoritarian policies that were introduced during that time (restrictions on freedom of movement, speech, association, etc) have come from democrat politicians.
Which party forced medical procedures on people who wanted to keep their job? Which party sends the federal police into the homes of its political opponents? Which party has been holding opposition protestors in prison without trial for over a year?
Now tell me who’s the fascist again?
I'm legitimately curious, why do you think we disagree?
I would argue that it's similar to what happens with a lot of major stories. Something happens, then people start seeing it everywhere even if it was always there. They just talk about it more because it's the topic of the day.
More recently, they tried to force Apple to put a backdoor in their phones.
It's honestly kind of wild watching the political left do a total about face and embrace and celebrate the FBI while the law and order political right turns against them.
I'm getting almost as much whiplash as when the crunchy, anti-vax political left (remember the 2019 Portland measles outbreak?) turned rabidly and militantly pro-vax while the generally neutral conservative right turned extremely anti-vax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Pacific_Northwest_measles...
But probably not as much whiplash as Obama got after he campaigned in 2008 saying that he believed marriage was between a man and a woman. https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2008/08/obama-says-...
Interesting times.
You need actual evidence Biden was involved in the situation. All there is right now is Hunter possibly referencing his father. This is on the level of "Russia, if you're listening..." except in that case we know an actual outcome that appears to have coincided with the call for action while the venture Hunter proposed never occurred.
Yes, the timing is... odd. That could be part of a natural cycle of attention, or external influence, or both.
Doesn't change the fact that ACAB, and the FBI are cops.
... oh, look, it's the Republican Party.
The FBI agent is pleading guilty. These wheels have long been turning.
The only part relevant to the present situation is the editorial discretion and social amplification putting an…ABC 7 KATV? Yes, that article on the HN front page. It’s topical, it gets clicks, it gets upvotes.
It’s gaining attention because of the zeitgeist.
> treat the emails no different than anything else
It seems that did not happen[0] (emphasis mine):
> On October 26, 2016, two weeks before the presidential election, Comey learned that FBI agents investigating an unrelated case involving former congressman Anthony Weiner had discovered emails on Weiner's computer between his wife, Huma Abedin, and Hillary Clinton. Claiming he believed it would take months to review Weiner's emails, Comey decided he had to inform Congress that the investigation was being reopened due to new information. Justice Department lawyers warned him that giving out public information about an investigation was inconsistent with department policy, but he considered the policy to be "guidance" rather than an ironclad rule. He decided that to not reveal the new information would be misleading to Congress and the public. On October 28, Comey sent a letter to members of Congress advising them that the FBI was reviewing more emails.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey#Release_of_informa...
Citations please.
Weird that you would say this like a fact, it really isn't the case. It is a smaller proportion of the population that is trying to cast doubt and trying to normalize this suspicion.
The FBI forensic lab for its whole existence went out of their way to falsify testimony on samples they were sent, implicating or exonerating according to what whoever sent them wanted.
Their "most-wanted list" was always a political PR instrument: they put on it whoever they were about to arrest, just so they would seem successful, effective, and deserving of increased funding.
Now whoever runs it inherits all their institutional power.
There was never democracy. People have an illusion of democracy. I think it was Noam Chomsky who said that in a democracy consent is manufactured.
Due. Process. Them you can abscond with liberties. No due process, no absconding with liberties. Destroying evidence, especially exculpatory evidence is the System placing itself above it's mandate from the People as laid out in the Constitution.
If you want to imprison someone, you prove your case, maintain all evidence, and investigate every instance of exculpatory evidence you can.
It is not the job of Law Enforcement to secure a conviction. It is their job to see Justice done to the best of their ability. If they violate that mandate by destroying exculpatory evidence, they vacate their authority to imprison.
The scales of Justice demand this bias. Otherwise you've equipped the State with carte blanche to lock up and keep locked up anyone they like.
Due Process. It means something. You may not sympathize with the person, but it is critically important that we hold the edifices of power to maximal account.