Former federal prosecutor on the case against the Oregon occupiers: “It’s enough to make a defense attorney weep.” https://t.co/nyVpMGZxvp

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) January 28, 2016

“…To prosecutors, the virtue of such conspiracy charges are their flexibility: The government need only prove that two or more of the defendants agreed to prevent some federal employee from discharging his or her duty by force, intimidation or threat. Prosecutors don’t have to prove they were successful.

It used to be hard to prove what defendants agreed to do: You had to infer it from their actions, or find a snitch to repeat their conversations, or wiretap them. But this is 2016, and we arrange our affairs in the open. The government’s 31-page affidavit in support of the complaint against the eight occupiers is chock-full of their own words: statements in press interviews, statements in videos posted to YouTube, statements in widely distributed emails. It’s enough to make a defense attorney weep…”