ex-Speaker Hastert Indicted

[Elfdart]

Dennis Hastert Paid To Cover Up Sexual Conduct With Former Student: Reports

The Huffington Post | By Sam Levine

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) paid a man $3.5 million to stay quiet about a sexual relationship from when Hastert was a high school teacher, according to multiple reports on Friday.

The reports of Hastert's conduct came after he was indicted Thursday for deliberately structuring cash withdrawals to avoid bank reporting requirements and lying to the FBI. According to the indictment, Hastert used the funds to pay an unnamed individual who attended the school where Hastert taught before serving in Congress.

The indictment said the funds were paid for "prior misconduct." It did not include details of the misconduct, but law enforcement officials on Friday said it was sexual in nature. Sources told The New York Times that the man Hastert paid had told authorities the former Speaker had inappropriately touched him decades ago. NBC News reported that Hastert had a "sexual relationship" with a student at Yorkville High School while he taught there.

Hastert worked at the Yorkville, Illinois, school from 1965 to 1981 and also coached the school's football and wrestling teams. The school district released a statement on Friday saying it had no knowledge of any misconduct by Hastert.

A little background is in order. After the 1996 elections the GOP threw a major tantrum. They had been thrashed twice by Bill Clinton, and their efforts to smear him ("He can't control his zipper, his waistline or his wife!") only made him more popular with normal people. The Whitewater investigation turned up nothing on Bubba or Hillary, so the prosecutor was fired by a right-wing judge at the behest of white supremacist senator Jesse "the Hutt" Helms (R-KKK) and replaced with a right-wing crackpot who went about sniffing Bubba's sheets.

His efforts paid off when he discovered to his horror that a middle-aged man might have an affair with a much younger woman. Since fellatio was perfectly legal for straight couples at the time, the prosecutor did what so many of them do as a last resort: trumping up charges of perjury, obstruction and contempt. This was somewhat clever, since married men who have affairs tend to lie ("I had to work late. No, really.") and cover them up. The problem was twofold for the Republicans in the House, most of whom came from racially gerrymandered districts where the voters had a seething hatred for black people and those they considered too friendly to them (it was an article of faith among them that Clinton had a love child with a black crack whore):

1) They got elected by fomenting a deranged level of hatred for Clinton, so letting sleeping dogs lie wasn't an option.

2) Quite a few of them were also middle-aged men who had a hankering for young women on the side, among other things.

Since Republicans are a stupid and shameless bunch, they tried to be brazen about it and went ahead with impeaching Clinton, hoping to blackmail him into going away. I can't begin to list all the dirty laundry that ended up coming out, but suffice it to say that Clinton's cum stains on Monica's dress were a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg compared to what his accusers were up to. Like Queen Cersei in last week's episode of Game of Thrones, they had turned loose the Puritan mob and found themselves set upon by the hounds they had unleashed. Once Speaker Gingrich knew the hounds had picked up his trail, he resigned and slithered away. His replacement, Bob Livingston, was also exposed as an adulterer, liar and all-around douchebag and he also ran away with his tail between his legs.

This left Dennis Hastert third in line to be chief executive should any mishap have befallen Clinton and Gore (or later, Bush and Cheney). So the end result of that year-long witch scare was putting an alleged child molester within two heartbeats of the presidency. Nice going, assholes.

[Mr Bean]

A little of of additional background, Hastert was chose specifically because he was supposed to be squeaky clean and until this week everyone assumed he had. The Republicans at the time had a short list of about eight people for speaker and rejected all of them for Hastert because the man came from a small town, had a small bio and looked and talked like a boring middle age white guy who's never done anything interesting in his life. Perfect a scandal free boring guy.

Well except for that possible underage possible gay sex thing, we still don't know the details but we should by the end of next week.

[Broomstick]

I don't know the full details of the incident, but if I recall the age of consent in Illinois is 17 or 18 so this may well be a case where the "child" is only a month or two away from being a legal adult able to consent to sex. It would still be skeevy as hell from the standpoint of a student- teacher/coach standpoint, but not on par with someone raping a two year old, which is what "child molester" tends to conjure up in Americans.

But yeah, Hastert was not the saint he portrayed himself to be, and for the conservatives it being a boy makes it that much worse.

[Gaidin]

There's also another irony, though it's not as good as what's been presented. Or is it? Just from a different angle on a different subject and just before the timer runs out(should it run out)?

Patriot Act That Dennis Hastert Passed Led To His Indictment

On Oct. 24, 2001, then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) shepherded the Patriot Act through the House of Representatives. It passed 357 to 66, advancing to the Senate and then-President George W. Bush’s desk for signing.

Hastert took credit for House passage in a 2011 interview, claiming it “wasn’t popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress” over it.

Little did Hastert know at the time that the law he helped pass would give federal law enforcement the tools to indict him on charges of violating banking-related reporting requirements more than a decade later.

The Department of Justice on Thursday announced Hastert's indictment for agreeing to pay $3.5 million in hush money to keep someone quiet about his “prior misconduct.” The indictment accuses Hastert of structuring bank withdrawals to avoid bank reporting requirements, and lying to the FBI about the nature of the withdrawals. It does not reveal the “misconduct” that Hastert was trying to conceal. The recipient of the money was a resident of Yorkville, Illinois, where Hastert taught high school and coached wrestling from 1965 to 1981.

The indictment suggests that law enforcement officials relied on the Patriot Act’s expansion of bank reporting requirements to snare Hastert. As the IRS notes, “the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 increased the scope” of cash reporting laws “to help trace funds used for terrorism.” The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which was amended by the Patriot Act, had already required banks to report suspicious transactions.

The banks that Hastert frequented, the indictment states, were required to “prepare and file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network a Currency Transaction Report (Form 104) for any transaction or series of transactions involving currency of more than $10,000.” From 2010 to 2012, Hastert made 15 withdrawals of $50,000 from multiple bank accounts in order to make the hush money payments, according to the indictment. One or more of the banks flagged the transactions as suspicious. In April 2012, “pursuant to bank policy and federal regulations,” bank representatives questioned Hastert about the transactions, according to the indictment.

After that, according to the indictment, Hastert began withdrawing cash in increments smaller than $10,000 to avoid detection. When the FBI questioned Hastert about the purpose of the withdrawals, the indictment alleges, Hastert lied and told them he was keeping the cash for himself.

Peter Djinis, a former senior enforcement attorney in the Department of the Treasury, told The Huffington Post that the Patriot Act may have enabled Hastert's banks to communicate their suspicions with one another.

The Patriot Act immunizes banks from legal liability for sharing information about unusual customer transactions, Djinis noted. Prior to the law, those kinds of communications might have put the banks in legal danger for violating customers' privacy rights.

Now, if a bank sees "something suspicious, they can contact another financial institution and discuss what they saw to get a fuller picture," Djinis said. Since Hastert was using multiple bank accounts, he said, "there may well have been such discussions in Hastert’s case."

If the Patriot Act is ultimately Hastert's undoing, it will not be the first time the law has been used to prosecute a politician’s criminal activity. In 2008, Newsweek reported that the Patriot Act’s expanded banking disclosure requirements put the FBI on the trail of former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer (D). Investigators identified payments made in connection with Spitzer’s solicitation of prostitutes.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Didn't someone have a sig desperately wishing that some of the self-righteous assholes in Washington would get caught up in a gay sex scandal? Cause this is funny. And ironic, given that alst article and the PATRIOT stuff helping to catch him.

[Elfdart]

This explains why he looked the other while Mark Foley was soliciting dick picks from teenage congressional pages -until ABC broke the news, at which point he fed Foley to the sharks.

[Dominus Atheos]

DENNY HASTERT IS CONTEMPTIBLE, BUT HIS INDICTMENT EXEMPLIFIES AMERICA’S OVER-CRIMINALIZATION PATHOLOGY

By Glenn Greenwald

Bush-era House Speaker Denny Hastert, who was indicted yesterday, is a living, breathing embodiment of everything sleazy and wrong with U.S. politics. That is highlighted not only by his central role in enabling every War on Terror excess, but also by this fact:

Hastert’s ability to make such large cash payments probably came from his career as a K Street lobbyist. He entered Congress in 1987 with a net worth of no more than $270,000 and then exited worth somewhere between $4 million and $17 million, according to congressional disclosure documents.

That common arc is more of an indictment of U.S. political culture than Hastert himself, but he’s certainly been happily and hungrily feeding at the trough. A political system that essentially ensures that every powerful political official becomes extremely rich is one that is inherently corrupt — as we’ve been taught for decades about those Bad Other Countries — and that is the most interesting and most important part of this story.

But Hastert was not indicted for any of that. Nor was he indicted for the alleged, unspecified “past misconduct” against an unnamed person to whom he agreed to pay $3.5 million to keep concealed.

Instead, Hastert was indicted for two alleged felonies: 1) withdrawing cash from his bank accounts in amounts and patterns designed to hide the payments; and 2) lying to the FBI about the purpose of those withdrawals once they detected them and then inquired with him. That’s it. For those venial acts, he faces five years in a federal prison on each count.

Hastert is about the least sympathetic figure one can imagine. Beyond his above-listed sins, he shepherded the 2001 enactment and 2005 renewal of the Patriot Act, whose banking provisions, in sweet irony, seemed to have played a key role in his detection and in creating the crime of which he stands accused. His long record in Congress involved, among many things, denying equal rights to people based on the “Family Values” tripe, as well as continually supporting ever-increasing penalties and always-diminished rights for criminal defendants. So he’s reaping what he sowed.

Moreover, because Hastert is rich, well-connected and white, he’s highly likely to receive extremely favorable treatment from the U.S. justice system, as David Petreaus among many others will be happy to explain to you. That two-tiered justice system — a super-lenient and forgiving one for the rich, white and powerful; a relentlessly oppressive one for everyone else — was the topic of my 2011 book, With Liberty and Justice for Some.

But there’s a reason the U.S. has become a sprawling, oppressive penal state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any other nation in the world, both in raw numbers and proportionally. There are actually many reasons: the profit motive from privatized prisons, the bipartisan nature of the “tough-on-crime” agenda, the evils of the Drug War, mandatory minimum sentences, the disproportionate use of arrest, prosecution and imprisonment against minorities.

But one key factor is over-criminalization: converting relatively trivial and harmless acts into major felonies. The postal worker who just engaged in an act of nonviolent political protest — flying a gyrocopter to the U.S. Capitol lawn to protest the corrupting role of money in U.S. politics — faces up to nine years in prison on multiple felony charges. That is over-criminalization, as are the shamefully large number of people in prison for selling prohibited narcotics to consenting adults who wanted them, or even for just possessing them.

Radley Balko, who has done among the best work on the broken U.S. criminal justice system, said this morning: “Dennis Hastert is one of the last people I want to be defending. But these charges are the picture of over-criminalization run amok.” Indeed, who is the victim in Hastert’s alleged crimes, which — again — do not include the “past misconduct”? He literally faces felony counts and years in prison for hiding an agreement to pay someone claiming to have been victimized by him, an agreement that is perfectly legal and standard (even common) when done with lawyers as part of an actual or threatened court case.

Over-criminalization breeds injustice and abuse of power. As the New York Times’s Adam Liptak reported in a great 2008 article on the uniquely oppressive U.S. penal state: “people who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences.” Moreover, “Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.”

Long-time appellate judge Alex Kozinski co-authored an essay entitled “You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal,” noting how easy it is to become a felon. “Most Americans are criminals, and don’t know it, or suspect that they are but believe they’ll never get prosecuted … Violations are so common that any attempt to go after all criminals would sweep up millions of people.” The essay cited as examples misfiling tax returns even inadvertently, smoking marijuana, betting on a sporting event with a bookie, lying to a government bureaucrat — all acts that can be, and have been, prosecuted as federal felonies. In their book The Politics of Injustice, the criminologists Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson documented:

In 2000, police arrested more than 2 million individuals for such “consensual” or “victimless” crimes as curfew violations, prostitution, gambling, drug possession, vagrancy, and public drunkenness. Fewer than one in five of all arrests in that year involved people accused of the most serious “index” crimes [such as assault, larceny, rape or homicide].

When everything — even trivial transgressions — can become a serious felony, it empowers law enforcement to punish whomever they want. It’s a key reason they are able to basically use arrest and prosecution powers to control and punish minority populations in the U.S. The arrest and destruction of Eliot Spitzer for prostitution was accomplished through the same type of detection system and charges being used against Hastert.

Turning someone into a felon and putting them into prison for years, or even threatening to do so, is one of the most repressive things a government can do to its citizens. Only serious acts of wrongdoing should enable that. The “past misconduct” in which Hastert allegedly engaged may qualify, but that’s not part of his charges. The acts for which he has been charged — hiding withdrawals and lying to the FBI about why he wanted that money — do not qualify.

What we have here is a classic case of the warped American justice system. Hastert’s seriously bad and corrupt acts will remain unpunished. And the acts for which he is being punished, at least as laid out in the indictment, are not seriously bad and corrupt. One can harbor contempt for Hastert (as I do) while still recognizing the disturbing aspects of the U.S. justice system revealed by his indictment.



UPDATE: In the indictment, the DOJ made the decision not to expressly specify the “past misconduct” Hastert sought to conceal. Nonetheless, federal law enforcement officials apparently spent the day running around leaking to media outlets what the indictment worked hard to insinuate: that “Hastert paid a man to conceal sexual misconduct while the man was a student at the high school where Hastert taught.” So this seems to be a case where federal prosecutors wanted to punish someone for a crime they couldn’t prove he committed, so instead reached into their bottomless bag of offenses to turn him into a criminal for something else.

Obviously, “sexual misconduct” with a student is a serious offense, but that still is not part of what Hastert is charged with. In order to punish him for that crime, the government should charge him it, then prosecute him with due process and convict him in front of a jury of his peers. What over-criminalization does is allow the government to turn anyone it wants into a felon, and thus punish them without having to overcome those vital burdens. Regardless of one’s views of Hastert or his alleged misconduct here, it should take little effort to see why nobody should want that.

Greenwald calls it, if the government wants to prosecute Hastert for the "sexual misconduct", they should charge him with that; but taking out slightly less then $10,000 from your own bank accounts shouldn't be a crime all by itself.

[Gaidin]

It wasn't exactly the increments of smaller than 10k. It was the increments of 50k, the questions, the oh shit moment, then the increments of smaller than 10k. You know, the pattern of actions taken, ala the timeline.

[Dominus Atheos]

That still isn't a reasonable crime to charge someone with. I also believe that people have a right to defend themselves against an accusation of a crime without it being perjury or obstruction of justice. I remember reading about a case (no way I could find it now, unfortunately) where a judge sentenced a person for a crime he committed, then tacked on additional years for perjury for pleading "not guilty" and testifying in his own defense.

[Gaidin]

That still isn't a reasonable crime to charge someone with. I also believe that people have a right to defend themselves against an accusation of a crime without it being perjury or obstruction of justice. I remember reading about a case (no way I could find it now, unfortunately) where a judge sentenced a person for a crime he committed, then tacked on additional years for perjury for pleading "not guilty" and testifying in his own defense.

What, trying to hide your financial transactions and lying about them? Unreasonable my ass. This is one of those times they've legitimately nailed someone to the wall for a financial indictment and there's not really anything you're going to be able to say about it with the timeline they've got.

[Dominus Atheos]

If the financial transactions aren't for illegal purposes, hiding them, or even lying about them, shouldn't be illegal.

[Gaidin]

If the financial transactions aren't for illegal purposes, hiding them, or even lying about them, shouldn't be illegal.

If the financial transactions are for legal purposes what the fuck is he doing? And making false statements to a federal investigator has been a crime since the 1860's.

[Dominus Atheos]

Paying extortion, which is a crime for the extortioner, but not the extrotionee. And people should have a right to defend themselves against criminal investigations.

As i said before, if they want to charge Hastert for the sexual misconduct, they should just charge him for the sexual misconduct.

[Gaidin]

Paying extortion, which is a crime for the extortioner, but not the extrotionee. And people should have a right to defend themselves against criminal investigations.

As i said before, if they want to charge Hastert for the sexual misconduct, they should just charge him for the sexual misconduct.

Except, literally, it was the banks following the law this asshat passed. I use plural since thanks to his law they have have gotten to talk to each other. They notified the investigators. He lied to the investigators. And modified his behavior after the questioning which made it still more questionable. Seriously, the entire timeline adds up to something the Grand Jury said try him for.

He'll get to defend himself unless magically you think there won't be a defense? What asshattery is that? Something about Illinois? Too bad he did these transactions there...

[Dominus Atheos]

What part of this are you not getting? Being extorted isn't a crime and withdrawing money from your own bank account to pay the extortioner isn't a crime. What is a crime, but shouldn't be, is withdrawing just under a certain amount of money and telling the police/justice system that you are innocent when being accused of a crime.

[Dominus Atheos]

Let me put it this way, both of those things may be evidence of a crime and may be used to get a search warrant to discover other, actual crimes; but they shouldn't be crimes in and of themselves.

[Simon_Jester]

So to be clear, if you commit a crime, and an investigator is looking into allegations that you committed a crime, and they ask you "why do you keep paying what looks like hush money to the person you supposedly committed this crime against?..."

It's okay to lie to the police about that?

[Dominus Atheos]

It definitely shouldn't be a crime, yes. You should have the right to defend yourself against accusations of crimes.

[Kamakazie Sith]

It definitely shouldn't be a crime, yes. You should have the right to defend yourself against accusations of crimes.

You can defend yourself. You can hire an attorney and/or remain silent.

[Dominus Atheos]

You and I have a different definition of defending oneself. Staying silent isn't actually "defending yourself", it's doing nothing. Maybe I should rephrase that as "deny committing a crime." Under current law, it's perjury to testify in your own defense at a criminal trial, and you can receive a longer for doing so.

[Block]

You and I have a different definition of defending oneself. Staying silent isn't actually "defending yourself", it's doing nothing. Maybe I should rephrase that as "deny committing a crime." Under current law, it's perjury to testify in your own defense at a criminal trial, and you can receive a longer for doing so.

It's only perjury if you lie. If you'd be admitting to crimes you can just plead the fifth about what the hush money was for.

[Kamakazie Sith]

You and I have a different definition of defending oneself. Staying silent isn't actually "defending yourself", it's doing nothing. Maybe I should rephrase that as "deny committing a crime." Under current law, it's perjury to testify in your own defense at a criminal trial, and you can receive a longer for doing so.

I think if you deny committing a crime that you have actually committed but that's all you do then obstruction of justice is probably a bit harsh. Denying committing a crime doesn't impair an investigation. Now if you providing false statements, evidence, etc then I think obstruction fits and is outside the realm of a reasonable defense.

[Dominus Atheos]

So if someone is accused and convicted of robbing a store, and while being questioned and again during the trial (after being sworn in) that person says that they were home alone all that night, should that be a crime?

[Simon_Jester]

So if someone is accused and convicted of robbing a store, and while being questioned and again during the trial (after being sworn in) that person says that they were home alone all that night, should that be a crime?

If it is proven that they were not home alone that night, yes it should. And it would have to be proven they were not at home alone all night, in order to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If you swear under oath that you were at home and the security footage captures you in the store... yes, you deserve to get hit with perjury along with the robbery.

Thing is, you didn't have to incriminate yourself. You didn't have to volunteer information you knew was false. Legally, you could have just stayed out of it, declined to answer anything until given a chance to consult with an attorney, and the attorney would as a matter of basic common sense told you NOT to invent a story that would be contradicted by obvious, physical evidence after the fact.

It definitely shouldn't be a crime, yes. You should have the right to defend yourself against accusations of crimes.

"Defend yourself," in this context, has legal limits. For example, you can't "defend yourself" against an awkward question by pulling out a gun and shooting the questioner dead. That's illegal, regardless of whether you personally think it is a form of "defending yourself."

There is enough precedent and common sense behind this that I'm going to assume you accept the idea of limits on what it means for a person accused of a crime to 'defend themself.'

Now, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that you have a right to not be forced to incriminate yourself by the state's power to compel you to answer questions.

You and I have a different definition of defending oneself. Staying silent isn't actually "defending yourself", it's doing nothing. Maybe I should rephrase that as "deny committing a crime." Under current law, it's perjury to testify in your own defense at a criminal trial, and you can receive a longer for doing so.

No, it's not- but it's perjury to lie under oath after agreeing to testify in your own defense. You can't be compelled to say anything incriminating, but if you promise to tell the truth, then tell lies instead, "to defend yourself," you've compounded your crime with perjury.

This seems fair to me. The court system has to be on some level functional- it does not exist for the purposes of letting literally every guilty person go free. One of the basic, minimal things a court system has to do in order to function is punish people who lie to it. Because the incentive to lie to a judge is very large, and the judge's ability to do their job fairly goes completely out the window if people do so regularly. There has to be SOME incentive to tell the truth.

So if, of your own free will, you decide to go up and tell them what happened, that story you tell them can't just be a work of fiction. The court is not there for you to make up some bullshit lies in an attempt to get free of the accusations against you. It is there to investigate the truth and act accordingly. If you're worried that telling the truth will incriminate you, don't agree to take the stand. Because you can't even be compelled to say true things, and you have a right to a professional attorney to advise you on which true things you should and should not say, what questions you should and should not answer.

Your right to "defend yourself" is restricted to your right to find and present real proof that casts doubt on the idea that you committed the crime you're accused of. It should not and does not extend to a right to make stuff up.
____________________

Now, tying this all back to the Greenwald article DA cited...

I think that tying the Hastert case to the overall problem of "over-criminalization" is not a good idea. The "overcriminalization" problem has three parts. In each case the problem is that modern police are violating a basic principle that was enshrined in the structure of 19th and 20th century jurisprudence. The problem is not that we need to invent new fundamental principles- at most, we need to codify or modify existing legal rights to make sure those principles are upheld.

The basic problems that are rightly criticized here are:
___

1) The police are wandering around in certain areas, arresting people for "breathing while standing in the wrong place" or "looking funny" and then retroactively trying to find one of several very flexible and nebulously defined crimes. When you can be arrested for "loitering" because you stood outside the door to your own apartment building too long, or for carrying items that turn out to be legal, and when the character of these arrests becomes violent and degrading and dangerous (e.g. Freddie Gray), something is very wrong.

This comes about as a result of "broken windows" policing run amok. The basic idea is that you can improve a society's overall crime problems by cracking down on relatively minor crimes such as graffiti, jumping of subway turnstiles, the sale of minor contraband, and loitering. There is some evidence to support this (and some evidence against it). But regardless of whether you believe in "broken windows policing," we should all be able to agree that people should only be arrested for things that are obviously crimes. Trawling large areas looking for anyone "vaguely suspicious" and arresting them is simply police harassment of the citizenry, and exposes law-abiding citizens to needless and potentially injurious harassment.
___

2) The rejection of efforts to rehabilitate convicted criminals from low economic strata. Although upper-class criminals convicted of a felony can still find their lifestyle severely dented, lower-class criminals find it crushed and mangled. This increases recidivism because it gives the felon very few options except to go back and pursue a life of crime.

The main motivating factor behind this seems to be a widespread popular dislike of criminals (understandable) that gets in the way of actually preventing crime and making criminals into functional members of society (not so understandable). There are other negative side effects from this in communities where the crime rate is relatively high and concentrated too; the difficulty of reforming does a lot to make the career criminal a sympathetic figure in the eyes of the citizenry in those communities.
___

3) To compound (1) and tie into (2), lower-class defendants are often unable to defend themselves effectively, and are placed in a position where the only way to get out of the system in a timely manner is to plead guilty without benefit of an attorney. This naturally results in a lot of people being convicted who really shouldn't have, and tends to pad out the criminal records of the innocent and guilty alike.
___

The thing that's biting Hastert here is not one of those three issues. Hastert is being bitten by a combination of new laws about what information the government cannot gather (which he did more than almost anyone else to pass), and the longstanding prohibition against actively misleading law enforcement during an investigation.

There is no need for any special measures to protect Hastert's "right" to mislead law enforcement.

[Dominus Atheos]

In a perfect world police, judges, and juries would understand that invoking your right to remain silent or refusing to testify in your own defense isn't admitting to a crime and shouldn't be in any way suspicious; but we don't live in a perfect world, so remaining silent isn't a good way to defend yourself against criminal charges.