Roger Stone, Warrants, and Good Faith.

I personally find the Roger Stone case very interesting. The guy was definitely a political operative and consistently operated in a murky gray area around legality. I don't have the legal expertise to understand all the quirks of his case, but here is a good article summarizing what and why he was convicted for. The part that intrigues me is the 4th Amendment and the good faith idea behind search warrants. I am a firm believer that the legal process and court system is overly complicated. I will not pretend to be an expert, but I am attempting to bring a common sense approach to things. The 4th Amendment states "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."  The Surpreme Court has made several rulings regarding valid warrants and good faith requests for warrants. The most often cited is US vs Leon. The link has an in depth article. The article states "For example, assume that a judge decides that an affidavit submitted by a police officer establishes probable cause to issue a warrant. Even if a reviewing court later disagrees and decides that the warrant shouldn’t have been issued in the first place, the officer’s search in good-faith reliance on the warrant will be considered valid, and whatever the search turns up will be admissible in evidence. If, however, the warrant is issued on the basis of statements in the affidavit that the police knew to be untrue or made recklessly without proper regard for their truth, the evidence from a search based on the warrant may later be excluded. In this situation, the evidence would be excluded based on the police officer’s actions, not an error by the judge." To summarize, if a judge makes a procedural error based on good faith information the evidence from the search is admissible, if the officer lies or makes bad faith statements the evidence is inadmissible. I am aware that this a kinda long argument, but I hit the nooners pretty hard last night so bear with me. The case against Roger Stone was predicated on information obtained from FISA warrants issued allowing surveillance on Carter Page. An independent IG (Michael Horowitz) testified before Congress that the FBI lied to obtain the FISA warrants. According the good faith ruling in US vs Leon, the warrants were issued based on bad faith information from the FBI and all evidence obtained is inadmissible. This would mean that any warrants issued based on surveillance of Carter Page are also invalid. I don't agree with how President Trump phrases his comments, constantly screamimg witch hunt and hoax, but at the core of the issue he is correct. The entire Russian Collusian investigation was predicated on bad faith warrants that should of never been issued. In my eyes this exonerates Stone, Gen. Flynn, and Manafort. Do I think that these individuals are all squeaky clean, upstanding citizens? No. Did they probably do some shady shit? Yes. But by applying a basic common sense approach to their legal rights, none of them should be doing jail time in relation to the Mueller report. This why Stone's sentence was commuted and also why General Flynn will not see the inside of a jail cell. Stay safe everyone, wash your hands, and have a great day.