Attorney Harvey Silverglate has been in the mix in a variety of high-profile cases. In Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, I was reminded of the old line from Soviet days: How do we know they're guilty? The secret police never arrests an innocent man.
Silverglate covers example after example of people in business, politics, and other fields who have found themselves on the unwelcome receiving end of federal prosecutors' attentions. This book was frustrating to read. In cases which which is was a little bit familiar, I had to face the fact that I have bought the media's superficial reporting. (E.g., Martha Stewart is clearly guilty of insider trading, and Michael Milken is a crook. Neither is true.) But Silverglate descibes the cases of people whose convictions are nebulous and the "crimes" they are accused of are vague or nonexistent. Federal law enforcement has a bad habit of slapping the "wire fraud" label on any activity they don't like.
And that's the theme of the book. The feds find some activity they don't like, and they poke around looking for a crime. Again, like the Soviets used to say, Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime. Silverglate shows that living clean, following the rules, and having personal integrity is not enough. If they feds see you doing something they don't like, they will, one way or another, find a way to charge you.
(By the way, this book was published in 2011, so Silverglate, obviously, doesn't address the Trump era. But I couldn't help thinking of all the Trump associates who have been convicted of one thing or another. Surely some of them were legitimately guilty of something, but I couldn't help thinking that many of them have been targeted in the manner Silverglate describes. On the other hand, it's remarkable that Trump himself hasn't been convicted of something, not because he's a criminal but because so many in government want him to go down for something, anything! Maybe Silverglate will write a new edition. . . .)
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