Some anti-Russianites and Trump critics are saying that the guilty plea by 30-year-old Russian citizen Maria Butina confirms that the Russian government was meddling in the 2016 presidential election. It’s true that Russia might well have been helping Donald Trump, who was committed to establishing friendly relations with Russia, defeat Hillary Clinton, who was committed to maintaining a relationship of anger, animosity, and hatred toward Russia. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Butina’s guilty plea to agreeing to fail to register as a foreign agent establishes that she was knowingly part of a conspiracy within the Russian government to meddle in the presidential election. Anyone who believes that has a genuinely naïve and innocent way of viewing the federal criminal justice system, which is akin to how sausage and congressional laws are made, which many people would rather not see or know about.
Here’s how the federal criminal-justice system works.
When the feds decide to target someone, they charge them with every conceivable crime that even remotely relates to the targeted person’s conduct. The potential time in jail, if convicted on all counts, usually adds up to several decades or even to life in prison.
The reason the feds do this is to coerce a plea of guilty from their target. What the feds do is offer the person an opportunity to plead guilty to one count of the indictment in return for a dismissal of all the other counts.
It Is Dangerous to Be …
Best Price: $0.99
Buy New $5.35
(as of 09:35 EST – Details)
The deal can include an agreed-upon sentence for the count to which the person is pleading guilty or the sentence can be left up to the judge.
The feds make it clear that if the…