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Horowitz did a proctological exam in order to make Trump happy. I have little doubt that you could do the same sort of deep dive on most warrants, FISA or otherwise and come up with similar problems, and that's because most courts most of the time don't look at warrant applications very closely and grant them, and most law enforcement know and expect this and are kind of sloppy in their applications because it almost never matters. This will continue, because pretty much everyone is OK with the idea that law enforcement will get their warrants.
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That's quite generous. Here's the less generous take:
https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/...the-u-s-media/
Somewhere between those two views I think lies reality.
I haven't challenged a fed warrant in ages, but I recall judges not being so kind when they found that the application had a good bit of spin in it. (They know the feds are puffing and BSing a bit, but when they find there's too much of that in an application, I recall they get kinda pissed, for good reason.)
That was before Trump was elected. Imagine what pro-Trump agents might think is acceptable in his second term?
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How about the people who tortured? Obama's failure to go after them sent the message that torture isn't really a crime.
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If you torture because you think its legal because Yoo said it was legal, where's the intent to commit a crime? That's a really tough prosecution. I think Obama did the right thing there.
OTOH, the Holder Doctrine is indefensible. I'm not saying some bankers should have been jailed, but civil suits stripping them of their parachutes should have been initiated.
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If a Democrat wins next year, she sure as hell should prosecute Trump officials who used their office to commit crimes.
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Depends on the crime. If it's some strict liability statute that arguably should not exist (like 3/4 of our federal statutes), I say refrain from creating any further animosity between the "tribes" in this country. (I also don't want to hear about Trump after he leaves office, and a prosecution of him would keep the fucker in my news feed for the rest of his life.) If it's a clear cut case of someone doing something with easily provable intent, and it's a really serious infraction, I have no problem with prosecutions.
But we should not allow the states or feds to go nuts on Trump when he's out of office. I'm sure he could be charged with an endless litany of things. But I'm also sure that if we wanted to, we could also charge any person with so many business interests with any number of things. It's not a bad thing to have business people seek office and seek to run govt like a business. I don't want to see them dissuaded from doing so because the one business person we did choose a President was a lousy and corrupt business person who investigators and politically ambitious prosecutors found an easy target after he left office.
