You might be attaching some temporal qualities to the phrasing, but that's not how I read the comment. Generally, if you want to make a government investigation go away, you cooperate by demonstrating your innocence. Of course, it's the government's job to prove guilt, but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal, and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're not guilty".
> but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal
You must be joking. That's not how it works when the government has you in their crosshairs.
>and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're not guilty".
And then the government will spend years and millions of dollars trying to poke holes in that evidence of innocence.
Anyone who follows the news has seen this repeated over and over again. Various government authorities routinely engage in witch hunts with little evidence.
Maybe Mansoor Adayfi should've just provided evidence of his innocence after being shipped to Guantanamo Bay? They would have immediately released him, right? What a stupid guy he must have been that it took the government 14 years to release him.
I am talking about white collar crime, which tends to be much more black and white than terrorism. And no, the government doesn't have a history of spending millions in trying to chase frivolous cases. Has it happened? Sure. But prosecutors are graded on their closure rate which is why you see so many settlements. The last thing they want is to waste millions on a witch hunt.
You only see the bad. You say "anyone who follows the news" which means you've probably followed a handful of these...out of the millions of cases which get referred to prosecutors: the vast majority are ignored, the remainder are mostly settled, and a small amount end up in court. Government is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. I'm quite libertarian myself, but let's not concoct ridiculous narratives to affirm our views.
Tether is obviously the kind of business the government fundamentally doesn't like. Whether or not what they're doing violates any current laws doesn't matter, they are yet another Liberty Reserve enabling large scale money laundering.
Even in an imaginary world where Tether is a completely legitimate business not operating in violation of any existing laws, there would be no way for them to make government investigations go away within any reasonable timeframe.
It is simply ridiculous of you to suggest that we could expect the government to play fair when dealing with Tether.
> they are yet another Liberty Reserve enabling large scale money laundering.
> there would be no way for them to make government investigations go away within any reasonable timeframe.
Yes, this is usually the problem with breaking the law (such as facilitating large scale money laundering). You seem to believe this is a bug, while every other citizen views this as a feature.
People breaking the law cannot making investigations go away. And?
Sorry, I'm not interested in taking part in your weird struggle against Tether.
I am obviously not defending Tether, I do not have a single good thing to say about Tether. But unlike you seem to be, I'm not emotionally invested in what happens to Tether.
I was simply calling out the obvious bad faith argument presented by wmf. Even if Tether isn't violating any laws, the US government is going to go out of their way to get them.
>You seem to believe this is a bug, while every other citizen views this as a feature.
I have said precisely nothing that could be interpreted by a person of ordinary intelligence to suggest such a belief. This is something you have created inside your own head. I wonder why?
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