> "we have to hold him accountable" This is the kind of general, anodyne political statement every candidate ever makes. Seriously, if this is the basis we use

> "we have to hold him accountable" This is the kind of general, anodyne political statement every candidate ever makes. Seriously, if this is the basis we use to overturn cases as evidence of bias, then it would mean every Republican is immune from prosecution from every Democratic DA, and vice versa. > Notice he said "Trump administration" - that was political opposition, he was suing to oppose Trump's policies. Even in his previous position, he was a political opponent of Trump, and used his office to pursue political goals. And with this statement you've made the definition of political operative to include everyone in a state government opposed to the policies of the federal government controlled by the opposing party. So now that you've made everything politics, nothing is politics, and we can get back to the facts at hand. > Because legal changes should not be retroactive. There was no legal change, the law was applied as written as it has been to many other individuals. > If something is currently illegal, it doesn't require a "novel legal theory" to prosecute. The novelty here is applying new facts to an existing law in a way that hasn't been applied before. That's what people mean when they mean "novel". They don't mean the law is being twisted to fit the facts. They don't mean the law is somehow new or different this time. It's the same as it's always been. The novelty comes from it being unknown whether or not the facts actually fit the law by virtue of the "theory" being untested in court. This novelty is not unfair to the defendant. It doesn't mean they are being singled out or unfairly targeted for prosecution. It just means the specific facts of the case haven't been tried in this way before, and why should they have been? The facts are unprecedented. > Novel legal theory is just a way of saying "let's change the way the law is interpreted or enforced". And that's fine, as long as it's only enforced after the change is made public. No, that's a terrible system. All that means is you can get away with crimes if you are creative enough. You would just have to point to the novelty of the theory, the fact that the law hasn't been applied that way before, and then you'd be free. Then that specific crime would be open season until the bug was patched by legislation, which we all know takes forever. It's like discovering a zero day exploit, advertising it, and then hoping an unspecified patch will fix things at some point in the future. Uh, no that's a recipe for an pwned system, sorry. Novel crimes call for novel applications of the law. Criminals have an asymmetric advantage as it is with the presumption of innocence, there's no reason to give them more of an advantage.