8 ms·

This particular story sounds like they were executing a search warrant. Search warrants are commonly executed long before an indictment, because executing a sea

This particular story sounds like they were executing a search warrant. Search warrants are commonly executed long before an indictment, because executing a search warrant is one of the ways law enforcement collects evidence to indict people in the first case. For example, a search warrant on Donald Trump’s residence was executed in August of 2022 while Trump was not indicted until June of 2023. In this case, 61 people have already been indicted under Georgia’s state RICO act along with various charges of domestic terrorism, arson, and money laundering (https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/us/cop-city-protesters-indicted-rico/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/us/cop-city-protesters-indict...). And just like any conspiracy or RICO case, it’s common to start by arresting some people at the bottom and see which of them is willing to inform on the people at the top who might be harder to catch. Its the same basic playbook the feds used to take down the Mafia.

superkuh 3y ago
I wasn't trying to make a $modernpoliticalanalogy. I was speaking from painful personal experience that may be biasing me to think this is more frequent than it really is. Yes, they say they needed to search for a reason but I think we'll find none of these people ever have charges (related to the search warrant) filed against them. And that's the system: pretend the methods needed and used for real criminals need to be applied to people committing no crimes.
- philwelch 3y ago
  Throwing Molotov cocktails during a riot is a crime, and the people who do it are real criminals. In this case, it was a crime that seems to have been planned and coordinated ahead of time, which makes it organized crime under Georgia’s RICO statute. Dozens of people have already been charged. I don’t know if they’re going to end up charging the people who got raided in this instance; it probably depends on what they found during the search.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Those people were already indicted (61 of them in the massive case, most likely not actually committing any crimes at all). These are new unrelated people. Using rico case law the indict the massive group in the first place was an uprecedented action. And now these unrelated, unindicted people, are having their lives ruined just because they went to a protest. It's been a few days since this post and I've looked. There have been no more indictments. This was pure lashing out with indiscriminate violence by the Georgia police gang.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      > Those people were already indicted…. These are new unrelated people That’s not how these investigations work. You indict a few people, some of them snitch, now you have probable cause to expand the investigation. > And now these unrelated, unindicted people, are having their lives ruined just because they went to a protest. A “protest” that featured planned and premeditated acts of arson? Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about the prosecution of people who participated in the January 6th protest? Or is that different because it doesn’t agree with your political ideology? > It's been a few days since this post and I've looked. There have been no more indictments. It takes more than “a few days” to indict people. Sometimes it takes months—in the example I already cited to you, it took the better part of a year.
      - superkuh 3y ago
        >A “protest” that featured planned and premeditated acts of arson? Citation needed. That is certainly what the police are trying to claim to justify their lashing out but there's no indication it applies to this second group at all. I will not respond to your second attempt to make this about unrelated flamewar politics instead.
        philwelch 3y ago
        > I will not respond to your second attempt to make this about unrelated flamewar politics instead. That wasn’t my intention. I was genuinely curious whether or not you actually had a principled stance against protesters facing legal repercussions for being involved in a disorderly protest in which a minority of protesters committed acts of mayhem and destruction. If so, it should have been easy for you to apply that standard across the board. Instead, it appears that you actually do apply a double standard based upon your personal sympathy with the cause being protested. Which has left you in a closed circle in which you hate the police, so when a “protest” is little more than an organized smokescreen for acts of domestic terrorism against the construction site for a police facility, it’s automatically the police who are the bad guys for investigating the incident and not the people trying to burn down a public facility. And it is rather funny of you to accuse me of “flamewar politics” when you are the one advocating for people whose form of political protest entails literal flames.
eesmith 3y ago
Your parallel to the search warrant on Trump's residence hardly seems at all relevant. NARA asked for return of the documents, then a long negotiation ensued, along with partial return of the records. After the criminal investigation started, the DOJ subpoenaed Trump, and after several weeks of back-and-forths went to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the subpoenaed documents. The DOJ believed there were more documents, and issued a subpoena for surveillance footage. Only then was a search warrant issued, and with a far higher level of scrutiny than usual. The search took place at 9am, the Secret Service were warned a few hours before, and two of Trump's lawyers were present. Do you really think you can compare that to a 6am surprise raid where "This week alone saw Atlanta-area raids by law enforcement that took a woman out of her house with no shirt, left a naked photo of another woman on display after ransacking a room and dragged a man by his hair – while arresting none of them." or "person living at the house where Mazurek was arrested woke up on Thursday to a flashbang grenade"? No. > sounds like they were executing a search warrant The problem is that people believe that a 6am surprise raid using flash grenades and dragging people out by their hair is equivalent to a 9am search warrant executed with warning at the residence of an ex-President, with his lawyers present. Both are search warrants executed under color of law. That doesn't mean they have anywhere near equal respect for the occupants of the homes being searched.
- philwelch 3y ago
  > Your parallel to the search warrant on Trump's residence hardly seems at all relevant. It establishes that search warrants usually come before indictments in the investigation process, not after them. > The problem is that people believe that a 6am surprise raid using flash grenades and dragging people out by their hair is equivalent to a 9am search warrant executed with warning at the residence of an ex-President, with his lawyers present. Yes, that is the difference between a domestic terrorism investigation and a mishandling-classified-documents investigation.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    So why bring Trump into a Law 101 topic? My point is you prima facie should not compare them as the two search warrants are issued with a very different level of scrutiny, and with very different levels of potential physical and emotional harm. A mishandling-classified-documents investigation does not require a higher level of scrutiny than a domestic terrorism investigation. Trump's search warrant had a higher level of scrutiny because he was President, not because of the type of case. We can see what the government has done in other stolen document cases, like the Harold T. Martin III case: "The FBI originally believed Martin to be the source of the Shadow Brokers thefts of NSA hacking tools, and used the information provided by Kaspersky researchers to execute a search warrant on Martin's modest residence in suburban Glen Burnie, Maryland, deploying a SWAT team, setting up roadblocks, breaking down the front door with a battering ram, and deploying flash bangs inside the house before removing Martin at gunpoint". (Quoting Wikipedia.) Yes, he mishandled classified documents but no, he was not part of the Shadow Brokers. He may have been simply a data hoarder as "he appeared not to have ever accessed any of the files once he removed them from government facilities". The level of force used in his search warrant does not seem much different than these Georgia raids. Or a comparison with Jack Teixiera, also arrested on espionage charges, where the search warrant was executed by heavily armed police using an armored vehicle. At least that one took place in the afternoon when Teixiera and his family were awake and dressed. Here's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eMrlJUeBYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eMrlJUeBYU Again, not much different, but showing it is possible to be a bit more humane in executing this sort of warrant. We can also look at the Wen Ho Lee case to see what the government does to someone who they wrongly believe to be a spy, when the only evidence they had was his mishandling of "Protect As Restricted Data" work - which they retroactively classified to "Secret" so they could charge him. Trump called the very calm and non-violent raid on Mar-a-Lago an act of political persecution. Surely these Georgia search warrants may also be viewed as an act of political persecution.

superkuh 3y ago

I wasn't trying to make a $modernpoliticalanalogy. I was speaking from painful personal experience that may be biasing me to think this is more frequent than it really is. Yes, they say they needed to search for a reason but I think we'll find none of these people ever have charges (related to the search warrant) filed against them. And that's the system: pretend the methods needed and used for real criminals need to be applied to people committing no crimes.

philwelch 3y ago
Throwing Molotov cocktails during a riot is a crime, and the people who do it are real criminals. In this case, it was a crime that seems to have been planned and coordinated ahead of time, which makes it organized crime under Georgia’s RICO statute. Dozens of people have already been charged. I don’t know if they’re going to end up charging the people who got raided in this instance; it probably depends on what they found during the search.
- superkuh 3y ago
  Those people were already indicted (61 of them in the massive case, most likely not actually committing any crimes at all). These are new unrelated people. Using rico case law the indict the massive group in the first place was an uprecedented action. And now these unrelated, unindicted people, are having their lives ruined just because they went to a protest. It's been a few days since this post and I've looked. There have been no more indictments. This was pure lashing out with indiscriminate violence by the Georgia police gang.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    > Those people were already indicted…. These are new unrelated people That’s not how these investigations work. You indict a few people, some of them snitch, now you have probable cause to expand the investigation. > And now these unrelated, unindicted people, are having their lives ruined just because they went to a protest. A “protest” that featured planned and premeditated acts of arson? Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about the prosecution of people who participated in the January 6th protest? Or is that different because it doesn’t agree with your political ideology? > It's been a few days since this post and I've looked. There have been no more indictments. It takes more than “a few days” to indict people. Sometimes it takes months—in the example I already cited to you, it took the better part of a year.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      >A “protest” that featured planned and premeditated acts of arson? Citation needed. That is certainly what the police are trying to claim to justify their lashing out but there's no indication it applies to this second group at all. I will not respond to your second attempt to make this about unrelated flamewar politics instead.
      - philwelch 3y ago
        > I will not respond to your second attempt to make this about unrelated flamewar politics instead. That wasn’t my intention. I was genuinely curious whether or not you actually had a principled stance against protesters facing legal repercussions for being involved in a disorderly protest in which a minority of protesters committed acts of mayhem and destruction. If so, it should have been easy for you to apply that standard across the board. Instead, it appears that you actually do apply a double standard based upon your personal sympathy with the cause being protested. Which has left you in a closed circle in which you hate the police, so when a “protest” is little more than an organized smokescreen for acts of domestic terrorism against the construction site for a police facility, it’s automatically the police who are the bad guys for investigating the incident and not the people trying to burn down a public facility. And it is rather funny of you to accuse me of “flamewar politics” when you are the one advocating for people whose form of political protest entails literal flames.

eesmith 3y ago

Your parallel to the search warrant on Trump's residence hardly seems at all relevant. NARA asked for return of the documents, then a long negotiation ensued, along with partial return of the records. After the criminal investigation started, the DOJ subpoenaed Trump, and after several weeks of back-and-forths went to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the subpoenaed documents. The DOJ believed there were more documents, and issued a subpoena for surveillance footage. Only then was a search warrant issued, and with a far higher level of scrutiny than usual. The search took place at 9am, the Secret Service were warned a few hours before, and two of Trump's lawyers were present. Do you really think you can compare that to a 6am surprise raid where "This week alone saw Atlanta-area raids by law enforcement that took a woman out of her house with no shirt, left a naked photo of another woman on display after ransacking a room and dragged a man by his hair – while arresting none of them." or "person living at the house where Mazurek was arrested woke up on Thursday to a flashbang grenade"? No. > sounds like they were executing a search warrant The problem is that people believe that a 6am surprise raid using flash grenades and dragging people out by their hair is equivalent to a 9am search warrant executed with warning at the residence of an ex-President, with his lawyers present. Both are search warrants executed under color of law. That doesn't mean they have anywhere near equal respect for the occupants of the homes being searched.

philwelch 3y ago
> Your parallel to the search warrant on Trump's residence hardly seems at all relevant. It establishes that search warrants usually come before indictments in the investigation process, not after them. > The problem is that people believe that a 6am surprise raid using flash grenades and dragging people out by their hair is equivalent to a 9am search warrant executed with warning at the residence of an ex-President, with his lawyers present. Yes, that is the difference between a domestic terrorism investigation and a mishandling-classified-documents investigation.
- eesmith 3y ago
  So why bring Trump into a Law 101 topic? My point is you prima facie should not compare them as the two search warrants are issued with a very different level of scrutiny, and with very different levels of potential physical and emotional harm. A mishandling-classified-documents investigation does not require a higher level of scrutiny than a domestic terrorism investigation. Trump's search warrant had a higher level of scrutiny because he was President, not because of the type of case. We can see what the government has done in other stolen document cases, like the Harold T. Martin III case: "The FBI originally believed Martin to be the source of the Shadow Brokers thefts of NSA hacking tools, and used the information provided by Kaspersky researchers to execute a search warrant on Martin's modest residence in suburban Glen Burnie, Maryland, deploying a SWAT team, setting up roadblocks, breaking down the front door with a battering ram, and deploying flash bangs inside the house before removing Martin at gunpoint". (Quoting Wikipedia.) Yes, he mishandled classified documents but no, he was not part of the Shadow Brokers. He may have been simply a data hoarder as "he appeared not to have ever accessed any of the files once he removed them from government facilities". The level of force used in his search warrant does not seem much different than these Georgia raids. Or a comparison with Jack Teixiera, also arrested on espionage charges, where the search warrant was executed by heavily armed police using an armored vehicle. At least that one took place in the afternoon when Teixiera and his family were awake and dressed. Here's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eMrlJUeBYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eMrlJUeBYU Again, not much different, but showing it is possible to be a bit more humane in executing this sort of warrant. We can also look at the Wen Ho Lee case to see what the government does to someone who they wrongly believe to be a spy, when the only evidence they had was his mishandling of "Protect As Restricted Data" work - which they retroactively classified to "Secret" so they could charge him. Trump called the very calm and non-violent raid on Mar-a-Lago an act of political persecution. Surely these Georgia search warrants may also be viewed as an act of political persecution.