In America, Anyone Can Be a Felon

People who mouth the cliché that ‘no one is above the law’ should be careful what they wish for.

By Richard Dooling. Mr. Dooling is a novelist and retired lawyer. Excerpts:

"According to a study from the Heritage Foundation, 1,510 federal statutes created at least one crime as of 2019. They contain sections and subsections so complex that the authors had to develop an algorithm to count the estimated 5,199 crimes then in the U.S. Code. According to the legal scholar Douglas Husak, another 300,000 or so regulations may be enforceable by way of criminal punishment at the discretion of an administrative agency. That’s only federal law. Each state has its own penal code. New York’s describes at least 575 crimes, from abandonment of a child to welfare fraud in the third degree. Many of these crimes apply to conduct no rational person would expect to be a crime."

"How about felony drug diversion for borrowing a Valium from somebody else? How about the overly high estimate provided to the Internal Revenue Service on the clothes and furniture donated to Goodwill? Tax fraud anyone? Let’s hope none of those laptops contain an application for a home-equity loan in which the borrower overstated the value of his residence. That’s bank fraud. If the loan application was emailed to the bank, that’s mail fraud. If the back-and-forth between the borrower and loan officers amounts to 34 emails, that’s 34 counts of mail fraud."

"Before the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comey held a press conference explaining why his office was recommending that prosecutors not bring charges against Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information. “Although there is evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information,” Mr. Comey said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”"