There's a kind of maxim that's sometimes used to describe persecution of political dissidents in oppressive totalitarian regimes like that of Joseph Stalin, that goes something along the lines of "once the guilty party has been found, surely a crime can be found too (to convict them of)". And, indeed, in totalitarian regimes like Stalinist Russia, and many modern oppressive totalitarian regimes like that of China, political dissenters will be persecuted, jailed and even sentenced to death for the flimsiest of reasons.
And this even by having at least the appearance of following the law of the land, and proper legal procedure.
The thing is, it doesn't matter who the person is, you can always find some kind of crime to pin on that person, no matter how far-fetched it might be. If you keep digging enough on a person's history and life, you can always find something, especially if enough interpretation and distortions are applied.
And if everything else fails, there's a legal maxim that goes something like "sometimes when they don't get you on the substance of the investigation, they get you on the procedure". What does this mean? It means that even if the investigation onto a person finds no crime, the procedure itself may generate the crime to pin onto the person. Most commonly they will try to argue crimes that happened during the investigation, caused by the investigation, such as "obstruction of justice", "witness tampering", and so on and so forth, with "crimes" that relate to the investigation itself (rather than anything that the person has done previously.) In other words, the generic "investigation to find if a crime was committed" will create the crimes it's looking for.
This is very often used for political persecution, and is extremely common. There's perhaps no better and most prominent example of this than the current witch hunt against Donald Trump. Investigation after investigation has failed to find any impeachable offense... so now they are trying to indict him on "crimes" committed during the investigation itself. This is textbook "they get you on the procedure" tactics. The investigation itself creates the crimes it's trying to find.
And this even by having at least the appearance of following the law of the land, and proper legal procedure.
The thing is, it doesn't matter who the person is, you can always find some kind of crime to pin on that person, no matter how far-fetched it might be. If you keep digging enough on a person's history and life, you can always find something, especially if enough interpretation and distortions are applied.
And if everything else fails, there's a legal maxim that goes something like "sometimes when they don't get you on the substance of the investigation, they get you on the procedure". What does this mean? It means that even if the investigation onto a person finds no crime, the procedure itself may generate the crime to pin onto the person. Most commonly they will try to argue crimes that happened during the investigation, caused by the investigation, such as "obstruction of justice", "witness tampering", and so on and so forth, with "crimes" that relate to the investigation itself (rather than anything that the person has done previously.) In other words, the generic "investigation to find if a crime was committed" will create the crimes it's looking for.
This is very often used for political persecution, and is extremely common. There's perhaps no better and most prominent example of this than the current witch hunt against Donald Trump. Investigation after investigation has failed to find any impeachable offense... so now they are trying to indict him on "crimes" committed during the investigation itself. This is textbook "they get you on the procedure" tactics. The investigation itself creates the crimes it's trying to find.
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