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government admission that evidence has been tampered with post seizure is a serious issue; you want to give the government the benefit of the doubt in all places we don't have "actual evidence" their conduct was below the standard we should expect, but that isn't a fair assessment given the history of these prosecutors not only in this case but others
we're talking about an extreme standard to prove criminal guilt; reasonable doubt inhabits these hidden areas of government conduct
at some point, 'oopsies, we made yet another misleading statement totally accidentally and also fought to avoid admitting it for months and also here are better, more innocent explanations for why evidence has been tampered with' should adjust your priors in meaningful ways as opposed to handwaving "reduced credibility" which doesn't actually affect the way you evaluate any of this
for these prosecutors, bridging the gap from this admission to concluding they're likely lying is justifiable
...You appear to be making the above argument about "oopsies" in this case. But of course, the agency in question has an absolutely horrifying history of previous "oopsies". @gattsuru covers a small selection of recent cases, and as he mentions, those aren't even top-ten contenders.
The FBI has been a deeply corrupt institution since the day of its founding. We actually know quite a few details about the sort of leader Hoover was, and the sort of organization he built. We know how that organization operated six decades ago, five, four, three. And then, somehow, the magical trustworthiness always appears for the current agency whose behavior we can only incompletely analyze, so they always get the benefit not only of the doubt, but of willful ignorance.
I should put together a list of OIG reports into FBI misconduct over the last couple decades. The reports will regularly find pretty serious misconduct and additionally list facts readers can easily connect as what is very likely some sort of extortion crime and then the report gets put in a cabinet somewhere mostly without any media attention, the agents involved will retire with full benefits, and then we turn the page and forget about it ready to be exasperated with the next FBI accusation against "the bad guys." For example, the OIG report looking into the FBI's handling of multiple victim accusations about USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Does anyone else find it odd that while this investigation was being slow-walked to the point it wasn't moving at all until a local paper The Indystar broke the story wide-open and lead to public allegations by former gymnasts, the head of the office and likely his underling were working on obtaining post retirement cushy jobs with the US Olympic committee? Odd the head of the office lied to OIG investigators to attempt to cover up their misrepresentations of evidence and witness interviews as well as their attempt to coincidentally seek a job with USA Gymnastics/US Olympic committee. Huh, weird, oh well I guess he gets to retire with full benefits.
This agency is rotten to the core. I legitimately do not understand how it continues to enjoy such high reputation for credibility given the long list of known abuses where no one was meaningfully held accountable. I legitimately do not understand why judge's eyes gloss over or even they get angry when it's suggested these people shouldn't be assumed to be the most credible people to ever exist. It's almost comical how much defense counsel has to tip-toe around it until they find essentially a smoking gun. We turn the page and forget about it, "oh here look, the FBI is going after ____ for ____. He must be a bad guy." Do I think the FBI is above planting and manipulating evidence, lying about it, and ruining lives trying to cover it up? Not only do I think they are willing to do that, there are dozens of cases of it being proven they did just that.
Funny enough, I remember that reddit comment because it made me RES tag gattsuru as just "great." edit: I typed out the above before I looked further down the thread where gattsuru mentioned it.
What's particularly funny is how even defense lawyers get into it. Cfe when themotte's own notice that an FBI agent perjured herself at length during a criminal trial; he was genuinely curious how the FBI agent would weasel out of it (spoiler: easily!), and even entertained the possibility "whether the prosecutors will bother" to bring perjury charges (spoiler: no).
If the spreadsheet has the data, and it was just hidden, then she didn’t perjure herself by saying she handed over all the data.
The spreadsheet did not appear to have all data, even in hidden form: Nordean argues that several messages were missing, in addition to those hidden, and the government's later claimed that Miller had deleted them. While some were never disclosed (either claimed as classified, 'FBI sensitive', or irrelevant), several of the deleted messages were made available later and had no plausible justification for nondisclosure. Beyond that, several pieces of Miller's live testimony contradicted the messages in the hidden part of the spreadsheet, most notably related to access to attorney-client privileged materials.
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