DOJ Decides To Try Backpage’s Michael Lacey For The Third Time After Failing To Get Convictions The First Two Times
The DOJ can be some vindictive sons of bitches. This has nothing to do with justice at all. This is just pure spite.
As has been detailed over and over again, while the public story was that Backpage was taken down for facilitating sex trafficking, the real story is very, very different. The site actually worked closely with law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to track down and actually arrest and stop sex traffickers. DOJ officials actually praised the site for their help.
Where they drew the line, however, was in doing the same thing for fully consensual sex work. They made it clear they didn't think that was appropriate, and so the Justice Department literally plotted to make an example of them for not working with them on their desire to shut down consensual sex work.
They raided Backpage, arrested a bunch of people, and seized" the site and the founders' assets. For the two top execs, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, the feds made it so they couldn't access their own assets to mount a defense, and got courts to block their ability to use the fact that the feds had been really happy with how helpful the company had been in stopping sex trafficking.
And yet, even after making it nearly impossible to mount their own defense, Lacey and Larkin had the first trial end in a mistrial after the judge found that the DOJ misled the jury to suggest that Larkin and Lacey had been involved in sex trafficking. But the DOJ decided to try a second time. A week before the trial was set to begin, Larkin died by suicide. Lacey still went to trial and again, there was a mistrial on nearly all of the charges.
In this case, it was due to a mostly hung jury that the DOJ failed to convince that Lacey had really done anything wrong. He was convicted of just one charge, related to money laundering for moving money around. Except, even that one charge was a weird one. As Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted, the jury found that Lacey was apparently guilty of concealing money laundering... but not actual money laundering. Which is a hell of a thing.
That Lacey was convicted of international concealment money laundering" is bizarre, since the money transfer was not concealed: His lawyer informed the IRS about it, as required by law. And it was not made for nefarious purposes, according to Scottsdale lawyer John Becker's trial testimony. Lacey had needed some place to park his savings after U.S. banks, scared by a years-long propaganda crusade against Backpage, had decided doing business with the company or its associates was a reputational risk. So Becker and another lawyer advised Lacey to deposit the money-$17 million, on which taxes had been paid-with a foreign bank.
It's hard to see how Lacey conducted a financial transaction to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity," even if you accept the government's premise that this money was derived from unlawful activity.
Anyway, the DOJ has now told the judge it intends to try, try again with Lacey.
The United States files this notice of intent to retry Defendant Michael Lacey on the 84 counts for which the jury was unable to reach a verdict and requests that the Court set the case for retrial. On November 16, 2023, the jury found Defendant Lacey guilty of Count 100 and not guilty of Count 63. For the remaining 84 charges (Counts 1-62, 64-70, 81, 83-84, 86, 88-92, and 94-99), the jury reached no verdict, and the Court declared a mistrial
At this point, it seems like it's just pure harassment of a guy who stood up to them just a little bit. Elizabeth Nolan Brown highlights how this really feels like pure retribution.
It's hard not to suspect the retrial is at least partially about retribution-and also butt-covering. The feds put a lot of time, effort, and public relations into this case, only to have two defendants walk entirely and one of their two main targets (Lacey and Larkin were always the big fish here) avoid conviction on 85 of 86 charges they brought.
That's got to be embarrassing. No wonder they want another chance.
American justice."