White-Collar Crime

The Inspector General Of The FCC Is The Rodney Dangerfield Of Federal Law Enforcement

The FCC wants Congress to give them guns. Why?

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Federal law enforcement too often reminds me of The Onion’s article, Insecure, Frustrated Bully With Something to Prove Considering Career in Law Enforcement.

Pat O’Donnell and Brita Strandberg of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis gave us the most recent version of this.

These good folks point out in the National Law Journal (subscription required, because the National Law Journal, apparently, doesn’t want anyone reading their publication) that the inspector general at the FCC — the folks who go after telecom companies — told Congress that they need guns.

Really.

The FCC IG has to go to Congress to ask for guns because he already asked the FCC and the FCC said, basically, no, that’s silly.

As the article explains:

Why, you might wonder, does the oversight of the oversight of radio, TV, Internet, phones and the like require guns? The FCC inspector general gives two reasons, neither persuasive.

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I love it when there are two reasons.

First, [the FCC IG] laments that the FBI agents and federal prosecutors to whom he brings potential criminal investigations are sometimes unavailable because of other Justice Department priorities.

He specifically cites an informal FBI rule that a case must involve $1 million in harm to merit agents’ attention. He claims that if the FCC inspector general had its own gun-toting criminal investigators, they would win the DOJ’s support for “lower value cases.”

Maybe if they had guns their kids will look up to them too. This is the law enforcement equivalent of going to law school to get your parents’ approval.

The second reason is also precious.

Second, the inspector general claims that his staff is afraid to interview witnesses in some cases without an armed escort.

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I could comment on that, but the folks at Harris Wiltshire do a better job than I can:

Keep in mind that these interviews are, by definition, about potential violations of communications regulations. The FCC doesn’t pursue gun runners and drug dealers. Lawyers all over America, within and outside government, conduct witness interviews under much scarier circumstances than an FCC investigator is ever likely to face. Buy your local public defender a beer and ask her about it. She may need a drink, but she doesn’t need a pistol.

Weaponizing our regulatory enforcers is a sad continuation of the trend to make administrative offenses criminal. The more IG’s carry weapons, the more they’re inclined to think that their primary function is criminal law enforcement. If your favorite tool is a hammer, you’ll see a whole lot more nails.

It’s bad enough that ambiguous rules — the stuff of summary judgment motions — are too often turning into criminal cases. That has an inevitable tendency to suggest that if a case could go criminal or regulatory it should go criminal. It’s exactly the opposite of the restraint that any sane person would want in her federal law enforcement community.

Worse, though, is that it subjects people to the mechanisms of criminal law enforcement who really shouldn’t be treated that way.

Check out, for example, this recent piece:

It’s a morning Kenneth Wright will never forget: 15 armed agents break in his front door and grab him by the neck, still in the boxer shorts he slept in. For six hours, a handcuffed Wright sat in a cruiser parked outside with his three children, ages 3, 7, and 11, while agents searched his house.

“They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids,” the Stockton, Calif., resident told a local news outlet at the time.

Drugs? Weapons? Domestic violence? No. As Wright later found out, his gun-toting visitors were from the Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). What the neighbors mistook as a S.W.A.T. team raid was really the execution of a search warrant in a student loan fraud case involving Wright’s wife, who wasn’t even there at the time.

“They busted down my door for this,” he exclaimed, “it wasn’t even me.”

That’ll show you to make a misstatement on your FAFSA.

But, more seriously, the more Inspector Generals get guns, the more they’ll have to show that they need them.

Perhaps there’s a reason that the Department of Agriculture’s IG needs (from the prior article)

85 submachine guns (original solicitation here), specifically “.40 Cal. (Smith & Wesson), ambidextrous safety, semi-automatic or 2 shot burst trigger group,” outfitted with “Tritium night sights for front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore grip), scope (top rear) and stock-collapsible or folding, magazine.

But there has to be a cheaper and better way to go after mislabeled organic eggs.

Matt Kaiser is a white-collar defense attorney at Kaiser, LeGrand & Dillon PLLC. He’s represented stockbrokers, tax preparers, doctors, drug dealers, and political appointees in federal investigations and indicted cases. Most of his clients come to the government’s attention because of some kind of misunderstanding. Matt writes the Federal Criminal Appeals Blog and has put together a webpage that’s meant to be the WebMD of federal criminal defense. His twitter handle is @mattkaiser. His email is mkaiser@kaiserlegrand.com He’d love to hear from you if you’re inclined to say something nice.

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