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If laws were broken by a law enforcement agency, the responsible parties need to a) either lose their jobs or, minimally, be reassigned to a department where th

If laws were broken by a law enforcement agency, the responsible parties need to a) either lose their jobs or, minimally, be reassigned to a department where they can never make that “mistake” again, and b) be prosecuted to the full extent of the law with and be sentenced to a punishment that discourages future “mistakes” by others from occurring. Why are these laws in place if they are not enforced? In recent cases, all levels of the FBI were complicit. Removing funding may only take away resources from useful areas while guilty parties are free to continue their bad behavior at the risk of only a stern talking to by Congress every few years when they promise this will certainly be the last time this happens. Throw some agents in jail along and see if the behavior continues? Imagine you or I caught lying to the FBI, lying to the courts, and then lying to Congress. What would our fate be? Certainly not continuing on with the status quo. Since DOJ has no interest in keeping itself accountable, what can be done? Can individuals who were caught up in this file criminal or civil complaints with any hope of relief? For someone not caught up in this, how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity?

uguuo_o 3y ago
Unfortunately, none of this is actually surprising. When was the last time such crime was actually prosecuted? It is very hard to have any trust in the legal system when there are many that curtail ot through sheer influence.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  It’s unfortunate that it’s not surprising and even more so that administrations feel like this is so accepted that (at best) nothing need be done and (at worst) it can be used to their advantage. Even when the minimal executive action of firing those involved is taken (for example, firing Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith) the media will attack the enforcers and give comfort to the perpetrators. It’s clown world.
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    Can you remind me again why Comey was fired? What rule did he fall afoul of? I was always under the impression that the FBI is an incredibly conservative institution in every sense of the word, so it's not surprising how the biases play out. What is strange is when they get caught up in intra-conservative-world politics.
    - ModernMech 3y ago
      "And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”" Trump told the world that he fired Comey for opening what has now been shown by the IG and SC Durham after a 4 year investigation to be properly predicated, if flawed. Firing Comey was an attempt by Trump to avoid accountability for what he and his campaign did, along with destruction of evidence, lying under oath, and 11 other counts of obstruction of justice by Trump identified by SC Robert Muller. It turns out Trump's campaign did meet with Russians and lied about it; Trump did had business in Russia he lied about; his campaign manager did meet with a Russian spy to discuss handing over dirt on his opponent; Russians did hack the Democrats and distribute the data; Trump did ask them publicly to hack his opponent in exchange for relaxed sanctions; and his campaign was knowingly sharing data with a Russian intelligence officer. So of course an investigation was opened into his campaign and their ties to Russia.
      - jonhohle 3y ago
        In what way was it properly predicated? He was briefed by the CIA that it was a campaign stunt.
        ModernMech 3y ago
        You'll have to be more specific about what part of my comment you're referring to as "it". Because obviously the investigation wasn't a campaign stunt. And if you want to read about how the investigation was properly predicated, here's the IG report: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf The existence and thoroughness of this report begs the question as to why the Durham investigation was ever needed in the first place.
- javajosh 3y ago
  Nowhere does it say that a crime must be surprising in order for the perpetrator(s) to be prosecuted.
daniel-cussen 3y ago
[dead]
wahnfrieden 3y ago
You’re coming from a liberal (classical sense) perspective and learning something about power, maybe! But your suggestion that society is fixed by people following the rules harder sounds like idealism. Money and power buy leniency and loopholes. Why not try taking away the power instead?More rules and punishments sounds a little like more power to wield if you can look past the allure of a functioning bureaucractic process for disposing of rule breakers
- jonhohle 3y ago
  I’m not sure that I follow, but yes. I think that severely punishing those who abuse special authority will improve that aspect of the government. I don’t think it will fix society, but having a functioning justice system certainly can’t hurt.
  - kurthr 3y ago
    So you think Trump should be jailed?
    - mc32 3y ago
      And pretty much all of the living ex-presidents including some presidential candidates and other federal officials who lie to congress without any repercussions.
      - bloomingeek 3y ago
        Politicians, pastors, doctors, lawyers, police, parents, judges, adults, etc...all must be held to a higher standard. The word 'responsibility' seems to be discounted when someone is caught.
        vxNsr 3y ago
        You’ve just listed everyone and then said they should all be held to a higher standard… higher than who?
analog31 3y ago
The US is the most punitive major country in the world, yet we still have crime.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  That’s not the interesting bit. Countries with less punitive laws have better crime stats although of course you could argue causation goes the other way.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    On the lower end, if you know doing common activity X (say possession) will get you a punishment as severe as more impactful crime Y (breaking and entering), what difference does it make? On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      > On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter Given how frequently this happens I wouldn’t be so sure. You also have to care about destroying the public trust and this is literally a thread about yet another instance of the FBI destroying public trust. Also, you don’t have to have a corrupt intent to take actions that destroy public trust.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  That flows with what I’ve said: rules for thee and not for me. As a private citizen my city, county, state, or federal enforcement agencies would have no issue charging me and putting their best effort toward conviction and sentencing. Meanwhile when those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks abusing the power they’ve been given, nothing happens. How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.
logicchains 3y ago
[flagged]
- jonhohle 3y ago
  That seems to be the issue, doesn’t it? If you give the Durham report weight, it doesn’t even need to go back that far. If someone is seen as a threat to influential people, from the top down agencies will do what they can to impede and undermine that administration. While on the one hand, it’s amazing to see RFK speak so boldly, on the other hand, should he be elected, I would fully expect some significant event to derail his administration. While getting shot seems too brazen, it definitely sends a message to any future hopefuls that such behavior is still not tolerated.
  - ModernMech 3y ago
    > If you give the Durham report weight, it doesn’t even need to go back that far. Ima stop you right there. The only thing you need to give weight here are the indictments that were brought as a result of the investigation, because that's what was promised. I've read the report from front to back, and it's filled with BS, omissions, and it even attempts to relitigate cases Durham lost in court on the merits. It's a pathetic way for a prosecutor to capstone his career. Read the Mueller report and the Durham report side by side. They are night and day in terms of quality of evidence, completeness, and clarity of reasoning. In fact, doing so reveals just how the Durham "investigation" was really an exercise in motivated reasoning, whereas the Mueller investigation was a serious, sober investigation of where the facts pointed.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      The problem is that at the start Brennan admits that he briefed the president, VP, and others, that the Clinton campaign was about to do, what ultimately happened. So one report starts by omitting that fact, and the other does not. What follows is a variation of fruit of the poisonous tree. > None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162] and "Mueller did not charge or suggest charges for [...] whether the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to influence the election".[163] The investigation led to other crimes, like being pulled over for a broken taillight and then getting busted for possession.
BurningFrog 3y ago
It was always like this, and will very likely always be so. You can't change it, but you can learn about it.
- bloomingeek 3y ago
  I completely agree, at the risk of being too simplistic, the FBI is a 'type' of necessary evil that our nation needs. However, we must learn from the missteps.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    Citation needed. Is the FBI a necessary evil or merely a force for corruption? I haven’t seen a good argument they’re necessary — and they’ve been involved in illicit political corruption since their founding, less than a century ago.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> Since DOJ has no interest in keeping itself accountable FISA court investigated the FBI...
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - 547354 3y ago
    [flagged]
- Natsu 3y ago
  They do that a lot, but they seem to have no power to actually do anything, because this is hardly the first time they've criticized the FBI with no visible consequences.
raincom 3y ago
"Prosecutorial Discretion" or "Selective Prosecution" is how corruption becomes rampant. In other words, "laws for you fools, but not for us", say FBI and DOJ. That's why the first thing they can get you convicted for "lying to federal officials".
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Exactly. I went to jail for a crime I wasn't guilty of simply because some rogue police decided to commit a raft of felonies to try and gather evidence against me. When I put that to the judge he told me that "the police are allowed to commit crimes to gather evidence." I tried going to the prosecutor with it and they will just laugh you out of the building. It's not a crime if you can't get the prosecutor to prosecute it. And the prosecutor's office almost never brings criminal cases to court on their own, they rely on the police for 99% of their work. If they went around prosecuting the police they wouldn't get any more cases and they would put themselves out of business.
  - StrangeATractor 3y ago
    Probably should have lawyered up. Illegally gathered evidence is supposed to be inadmissible in court. At least in the US. People get off on murder charges because of this, like that lady that killed her infant but the cop searched her trunk without a warrant or probable cause. She obviously killed it, but the only evidence was inadmissible, so she walked.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      That's not technically true. Evidence gathered in violation of a constitutional law is often inadmissible. But if you look at situations in which police gathered evidence in violation of a statute (e.g. committed a felony that wasn't additionally a constitutional violation), then I could count on one hand the number of times evidence has been excluded in courts across the USA in the last 100 years. source: I play a lawyer on TV. (not really)
      - 3y ago
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Throwing agents in jail can't and won't solve the problem. What happens is that the agents who avoid jail grow bitter... they were the "good guys" after all, and only doing "what needed to be done". So to see friends and coworkers punished for it makes them bitter. They double down in their resolve. Instead of changing behavior, they double down and promise themselves to be more careful to avoid punishment. Additionally, at some point in this cycle, they decide that those in charge, the ones punishing them, are more akin to impostors who have infiltrated government and are twisting it into something it shouldn't be. They begin their own loosely-organized "resistance", and seek to undermine the very checks and balances that miraculously allowed a few FBI agents to be punished for transgressions. In their own heads, you see, they're the heroes. Reform is impossible, once the organization has grown large enough to develop its own anti-reform "immune system". Which, I suspect, is almost a 100 years old at this point. > how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity? Don't pay your taxes. If your landlord were using your rent money to murder undocumented immigrant children, would you ask "but how can I make sure he just buys his groceries with that rent money"? Hell no. You just stop giving him the money. Or maybe you just keep handing it over and whining "there's nothing I can do". I dunno.
adrr 3y ago
What cases? The ones they tried to take to trial and lost twice? What’s the winning percentage on jury based trial for US prosecutors? 90%+ percentage and this guy has 0%. That’s what it needs to be investigated how two innocent people were prosecuted. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/john-durhams-igor-danchenko-defeat-is-a-final-loss.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/john-durhams-igor-da...
giancarlostoro 3y ago
> Why are these laws in place if they are not enforced? Because the agencies that enforce them... Don't enforce them. The government ran an investigation into government corruption and found itself free of corruption.
treebeard901 3y ago
> Imagine you or I caught lying to the FBI, lying to the courts, and then lying to Congress. What would our fate be? Certainly not continuing on with the status quo. Police lie to everyone. It's legal and there are no real consequences for it due to all the immunity they enjoy. People should realize the FBI are not the version you see in Hollywood. They are just police with more power, less oversight, and their image and stature mean lies they tell are much more likely to be believed and that much more difficult to counter.

uguuo_o 3y ago

Unfortunately, none of this is actually surprising. When was the last time such crime was actually prosecuted? It is very hard to have any trust in the legal system when there are many that curtail ot through sheer influence.

jonhohle 3y ago
It’s unfortunate that it’s not surprising and even more so that administrations feel like this is so accepted that (at best) nothing need be done and (at worst) it can be used to their advantage. Even when the minimal executive action of firing those involved is taken (for example, firing Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith) the media will attack the enforcers and give comfort to the perpetrators. It’s clown world.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  Can you remind me again why Comey was fired? What rule did he fall afoul of? I was always under the impression that the FBI is an incredibly conservative institution in every sense of the word, so it's not surprising how the biases play out. What is strange is when they get caught up in intra-conservative-world politics.
  - ModernMech 3y ago
    "And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”" Trump told the world that he fired Comey for opening what has now been shown by the IG and SC Durham after a 4 year investigation to be properly predicated, if flawed. Firing Comey was an attempt by Trump to avoid accountability for what he and his campaign did, along with destruction of evidence, lying under oath, and 11 other counts of obstruction of justice by Trump identified by SC Robert Muller. It turns out Trump's campaign did meet with Russians and lied about it; Trump did had business in Russia he lied about; his campaign manager did meet with a Russian spy to discuss handing over dirt on his opponent; Russians did hack the Democrats and distribute the data; Trump did ask them publicly to hack his opponent in exchange for relaxed sanctions; and his campaign was knowingly sharing data with a Russian intelligence officer. So of course an investigation was opened into his campaign and their ties to Russia.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      In what way was it properly predicated? He was briefed by the CIA that it was a campaign stunt.
      - ModernMech 3y ago
        You'll have to be more specific about what part of my comment you're referring to as "it". Because obviously the investigation wasn't a campaign stunt. And if you want to read about how the investigation was properly predicated, here's the IG report: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf The existence and thoroughness of this report begs the question as to why the Durham investigation was ever needed in the first place.
javajosh 3y ago
Nowhere does it say that a crime must be surprising in order for the perpetrator(s) to be prosecuted.

daniel-cussen 3y ago

[dead]

wahnfrieden 3y ago

You’re coming from a liberal (classical sense) perspective and learning something about power, maybe! But your suggestion that society is fixed by people following the rules harder sounds like idealism. Money and power buy leniency and loopholes. Why not try taking away the power instead?More rules and punishments sounds a little like more power to wield if you can look past the allure of a functioning bureaucractic process for disposing of rule breakers

jonhohle 3y ago
I’m not sure that I follow, but yes. I think that severely punishing those who abuse special authority will improve that aspect of the government. I don’t think it will fix society, but having a functioning justice system certainly can’t hurt.
- kurthr 3y ago
  So you think Trump should be jailed?
  - mc32 3y ago
    And pretty much all of the living ex-presidents including some presidential candidates and other federal officials who lie to congress without any repercussions.
    - bloomingeek 3y ago
      Politicians, pastors, doctors, lawyers, police, parents, judges, adults, etc...all must be held to a higher standard. The word 'responsibility' seems to be discounted when someone is caught.
      - vxNsr 3y ago
        You’ve just listed everyone and then said they should all be held to a higher standard… higher than who?

analog31 3y ago

The US is the most punitive major country in the world, yet we still have crime.

vlovich123 3y ago
That’s not the interesting bit. Countries with less punitive laws have better crime stats although of course you could argue causation goes the other way.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  On the lower end, if you know doing common activity X (say possession) will get you a punishment as severe as more impactful crime Y (breaking and entering), what difference does it make? On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    > On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter Given how frequently this happens I wouldn’t be so sure. You also have to care about destroying the public trust and this is literally a thread about yet another instance of the FBI destroying public trust. Also, you don’t have to have a corrupt intent to take actions that destroy public trust.
jonhohle 3y ago
That flows with what I’ve said: rules for thee and not for me. As a private citizen my city, county, state, or federal enforcement agencies would have no issue charging me and putting their best effort toward conviction and sentencing. Meanwhile when those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks abusing the power they’ve been given, nothing happens. How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.

logicchains 3y ago

[flagged]

jonhohle 3y ago
That seems to be the issue, doesn’t it? If you give the Durham report weight, it doesn’t even need to go back that far. If someone is seen as a threat to influential people, from the top down agencies will do what they can to impede and undermine that administration. While on the one hand, it’s amazing to see RFK speak so boldly, on the other hand, should he be elected, I would fully expect some significant event to derail his administration. While getting shot seems too brazen, it definitely sends a message to any future hopefuls that such behavior is still not tolerated.
- ModernMech 3y ago
  > If you give the Durham report weight, it doesn’t even need to go back that far. Ima stop you right there. The only thing you need to give weight here are the indictments that were brought as a result of the investigation, because that's what was promised. I've read the report from front to back, and it's filled with BS, omissions, and it even attempts to relitigate cases Durham lost in court on the merits. It's a pathetic way for a prosecutor to capstone his career. Read the Mueller report and the Durham report side by side. They are night and day in terms of quality of evidence, completeness, and clarity of reasoning. In fact, doing so reveals just how the Durham "investigation" was really an exercise in motivated reasoning, whereas the Mueller investigation was a serious, sober investigation of where the facts pointed.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    The problem is that at the start Brennan admits that he briefed the president, VP, and others, that the Clinton campaign was about to do, what ultimately happened. So one report starts by omitting that fact, and the other does not. What follows is a variation of fruit of the poisonous tree. > None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162] and "Mueller did not charge or suggest charges for [...] whether the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to influence the election".[163] The investigation led to other crimes, like being pulled over for a broken taillight and then getting busted for possession.

BurningFrog 3y ago

It was always like this, and will very likely always be so. You can't change it, but you can learn about it.

bloomingeek 3y ago
I completely agree, at the risk of being too simplistic, the FBI is a 'type' of necessary evil that our nation needs. However, we must learn from the missteps.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  Citation needed. Is the FBI a necessary evil or merely a force for corruption? I haven’t seen a good argument they’re necessary — and they’ve been involved in illicit political corruption since their founding, less than a century ago.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

> Since DOJ has no interest in keeping itself accountable FISA court investigated the FBI...

sieabahlpark 3y ago
[flagged]
- 547354 3y ago
  [flagged]
Natsu 3y ago
They do that a lot, but they seem to have no power to actually do anything, because this is hardly the first time they've criticized the FBI with no visible consequences.

raincom 3y ago

"Prosecutorial Discretion" or "Selective Prosecution" is how corruption becomes rampant. In other words, "laws for you fools, but not for us", say FBI and DOJ. That's why the first thing they can get you convicted for "lying to federal officials".

qingcharles 3y ago
Exactly. I went to jail for a crime I wasn't guilty of simply because some rogue police decided to commit a raft of felonies to try and gather evidence against me. When I put that to the judge he told me that "the police are allowed to commit crimes to gather evidence." I tried going to the prosecutor with it and they will just laugh you out of the building. It's not a crime if you can't get the prosecutor to prosecute it. And the prosecutor's office almost never brings criminal cases to court on their own, they rely on the police for 99% of their work. If they went around prosecuting the police they wouldn't get any more cases and they would put themselves out of business.
- StrangeATractor 3y ago
  Probably should have lawyered up. Illegally gathered evidence is supposed to be inadmissible in court. At least in the US. People get off on murder charges because of this, like that lady that killed her infant but the cop searched her trunk without a warrant or probable cause. She obviously killed it, but the only evidence was inadmissible, so she walked.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    That's not technically true. Evidence gathered in violation of a constitutional law is often inadmissible. But if you look at situations in which police gathered evidence in violation of a statute (e.g. committed a felony that wasn't additionally a constitutional violation), then I could count on one hand the number of times evidence has been excluded in courts across the USA in the last 100 years. source: I play a lawyer on TV. (not really)
    - 3y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Throwing agents in jail can't and won't solve the problem. What happens is that the agents who avoid jail grow bitter... they were the "good guys" after all, and only doing "what needed to be done". So to see friends and coworkers punished for it makes them bitter. They double down in their resolve. Instead of changing behavior, they double down and promise themselves to be more careful to avoid punishment. Additionally, at some point in this cycle, they decide that those in charge, the ones punishing them, are more akin to impostors who have infiltrated government and are twisting it into something it shouldn't be. They begin their own loosely-organized "resistance", and seek to undermine the very checks and balances that miraculously allowed a few FBI agents to be punished for transgressions. In their own heads, you see, they're the heroes. Reform is impossible, once the organization has grown large enough to develop its own anti-reform "immune system". Which, I suspect, is almost a 100 years old at this point. > how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity? Don't pay your taxes. If your landlord were using your rent money to murder undocumented immigrant children, would you ask "but how can I make sure he just buys his groceries with that rent money"? Hell no. You just stop giving him the money. Or maybe you just keep handing it over and whining "there's nothing I can do". I dunno.

adrr 3y ago

What cases? The ones they tried to take to trial and lost twice? What’s the winning percentage on jury based trial for US prosecutors? 90%+ percentage and this guy has 0%. That’s what it needs to be investigated how two innocent people were prosecuted. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/john-durhams-igor-danchenko-defeat-is-a-final-loss.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/john-durhams-igor-da...

giancarlostoro 3y ago

> Why are these laws in place if they are not enforced? Because the agencies that enforce them... Don't enforce them. The government ran an investigation into government corruption and found itself free of corruption.

treebeard901 3y ago

> Imagine you or I caught lying to the FBI, lying to the courts, and then lying to Congress. What would our fate be? Certainly not continuing on with the status quo. Police lie to everyone. It's legal and there are no real consequences for it due to all the immunity they enjoy. People should realize the FBI are not the version you see in Hollywood. They are just police with more power, less oversight, and their image and stature mean lies they tell are much more likely to be believed and that much more difficult to counter.