The
ethical implications of the FBI’s presidential-election interference should
embarrass the entire police and prosecutor apparatus, down to the state bars. A
consensus of legal commentators criticized, even condemned, the intrusion,
proving that letting cops and prosecutors announce their investigations and
charges impedes rather than promotes transparency. The license of the police to
selectively release information is a mainstay of their arbitrary power and a
bulwark of authoritarian ideology. Allowing cops and prosecutors to publicize
investigations and charges reinforces the false premise that the mere opinion of
the police should have moral weight. Cops and prosecutors are not disinterested
knowledge seekers. They are ideologically jaundiced and politically
self-interested actors, by nature authoritarian reactionaries. We can expect
that the FBI’s ranks are thoroughly Trumpite—like the police in general.
In
high-profile cases, investigation announcement, wrong on principle, is moot in
practice because, regardless of policy, cops will advance their political
agendas through leaks. The police milieu is beyond reform. More germane is the broadcast of ordinary investigations and charges, as when the state bars
post selective charging information upon issuing a mere Notice of Disciplinary
Charges. We know that the state bar’s information dumps cripple the defense of
charged attorneys, since the posting immediately dooms their prospects of
earning a living at law. Less obvious is that these mundane practices also
broadly undermine a basic civic understanding that investigation and charging
announcements are entirely one-sided. Pseudo-transparency elevates the
unilateral authority of the police and prosecutors. It conditions the public to
accept police pronouncements. It helps create a public mentality where serious
commentators contend that candidates shouldn’t be nominated for office if they’ve
aroused the FBI’s purported suspicions. And on the other side in the presidential
campaign, pseudo-transparency molds a public receptive to the bare
pronouncements of the intelligence agencies.
The
state bar’s mundane dumping of charging allegations helps create a public ready
to accept the word of the police agencies, allowing them to influence even
elections. Police (and state Bar) transparency isn’t advanced by encouraging
the public to believe whatever information the police and prosecutors choose to
reveal, this being the whole point of publicizing investigations and charges.
