I don’t think so. As you know, really smart people have a great capacity to do really dumb things. They overestimate their knowledge and are easily blinded by their prejudices.
Prosecutors are accustomed to having all the power in dealing with cooperating witnesses. Defendants desperate to get a deal to avoid going to jail or to get a significant reduction in sentence are highly motivated to do anything prosecutors insist on: agree to testify against others; liquidate all their assets to pay fines, forfeiture, restitution.
The DOJ officials who drafted this statement failed to appreciate how different the dynamics are when prosecutors try to convince people to come forward who aren’t worried about getting caught. They didn’t understand the sacrifices they were asking people to make. They forgot that wrongdoers are in the position they are in because they weren’t too worried about getting caught in the first place.
They also have political concerns. They can’t be seen as soft on crime.
So I believe that this program may have been a reaction to those who have said “look at how successful the SEC has been with their whistleblower program, why don’t you do something like that,” to which they responded, “ok we’ll try an experiment, but only on our terms.”
Do they want the program to fail? No, but they are only willing to go so far to make it work. Indeed, they may be well aware of everything I said in my essay and anticipate that it will fail. But this way they have answered their critics without looking soft on criminals.
But who knows what they were thinking or their true intent. I’ve been married 45 years and I regularly misunderstand what my wife is thinking. So there you go.
I don’t think so. As you know, really smart people have a great capacity to do really dumb things. They overestimate their knowledge and are easily blinded by their prejudices.
Prosecutors are accustomed to having all the power in dealing with cooperating witnesses. Defendants desperate to get a deal to avoid going to jail or to get a significant reduction in sentence are highly motivated to do anything prosecutors insist on: agree to testify against others; liquidate all their assets to pay fines, forfeiture, restitution.
The DOJ officials who drafted this statement failed to appreciate how different the dynamics are when prosecutors try to convince people to come forward who aren’t worried about getting caught. They didn’t understand the sacrifices they were asking people to make. They forgot that wrongdoers are in the position they are in because they weren’t too worried about getting caught in the first place.
They also have political concerns. They can’t be seen as soft on crime.
So I believe that this program may have been a reaction to those who have said “look at how successful the SEC has been with their whistleblower program, why don’t you do something like that,” to which they responded, “ok we’ll try an experiment, but only on our terms.”
Do they want the program to fail? No, but they are only willing to go so far to make it work. Indeed, they may be well aware of everything I said in my essay and anticipate that it will fail. But this way they have answered their critics without looking soft on criminals.
But who knows what they were thinking or their true intent. I’ve been married 45 years and I regularly misunderstand what my wife is thinking. So there you go.
That does seem like a self-evidently terrible set of ideas. Is it possible they WANTED the pilot to fail?