Civil Discourse – “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime” – Joyce Vance
From article…
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
“Show me the man and I’ll find the crime”
By Joyce Vance, Sep 20, 2025
With apologies, this is a long post for any night, let alone a Saturday, but Trump’s abuse of the power of the prosecutor and efforts to directly control the work of the Justice Department make it essential. In a world that has become a constant barrage of horribles from this president, know that what I’m writing to you about tonight is exceptionally serious and dangerous.
If you’ve been following the news since Friday afternoon, you know that Trump insisted that his own pick to be U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Seibert, be fired. Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I want him out.” His crime? He declined to manufacture evidence to bring charges against Letitia James, the New York Attorney General who successfully went after Trump’s company for fraud and is leading the charge on much of the litigation states’ attorneys general are bringing against the second Trump administration. The office was also reportedly handling an investigation into former FBI Director Jim Comey and declined to prosecute that case as well. By the end of the week, Seibert had resigned, although Trump claimed he’d fired him.
From article…
What does “decline to prosecute” mean? It means that for one of a number of reasons, prosecutors who’ve looked at the case don’t think there is sufficient admissible evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction. That’s the standard the Federal Principles of Prosecution require a case to meet before prosecutors can seek an indictment.
Prosecutors can decline to prosecute for reasons such as key evidence being inadmissible (for instance, because it was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on illegal searches and seizure), because a state prosecutor is in a better position to prosecute, or because evidence of a key element of the crime—frequently the required “mens rea” or state of mind (intent, knowledge, etc.) a defendant must have acted with when they committed it—isn’t there. Sometimes declination happens because no crime was committed. We don’t know what the reason(s) were here, but we do know that a team of investigators and prosecutors in an outstanding U.S. Attorney’s Office looked at the evidence and came up empty-handed. It was about the law and the facts, not politics, regardless of what a president who views everything through the lens of his personal popularity claims.
In investigations like these, agents with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies gather evidence and bring it to prosecutors, who evaluate it to determine what, if any, charges might be available. Sometimes they ask agents to go back and look for specific, additional evidence if there’s a weakness. Federal law creates crimes and sets out specific “elements” of the crime prosecutors must be able to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, in the minds of jurors in order to convict. If there’s a problem with one or more elements, but serious indications that a crime was committed, the team works together to try to acquire additional evidence.
“Show me the man and I’ll find the crime” by Joyce Vance
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