Elie Honig @ElieHonig
@CNN Senior Legal Analyst, former federal and state prosecutor, bestselling author #HatchetMan book, host #UpAgainstTheMob podcast, #CafeBrief weekly column.

Thread Let me address the refrain, “This is how it works, prosecutors start with lower-level players and work their way up.” That’s an oversimplification of what aggressive prosecutors *actually* do, and it’s a recipe to sweep up a whole bunch of mopes and no power players.

By the book, yes, prosecutors sometimes work low to high. I did it. **But you have to be realistic about proximity and chains of command.** How many layers up will you need to flip, and can you realistically reach the top that way, given power structures and relationships?

There are plenty of ways you can shoot at (or at least in the vicinity of) the top, and often that’s realistically the *only* way you’ll get there. Take a run at real power players, try to flip them, wiretaps, search warrants, and more.

For example, a narcotics prosecutor can start with street-level drug pitchers and hope to work up the chain to more powerful players. Sometimes things will go great and you’ll move up a couple layers. But you’ll reach El Chapo that way once in a thousand times.

Or if, as a mafia prosecutor, all I ever did was target lowly mob associates and hope to flip up to soldiers, then capos, then the consilgieri and underboss, then the boss, I’d never have gotten anywhere near a real power player.

I’d certainly be able to say, “I did what prosecutors always do, I followed the facts and the law as far as they’d take me, without fear or favor.” But I’d also be setting the stage to come up well short of true accountability for the bosses.

There are plenty of ways you can shoot at (or at least in the vicinity of) the top, and often that’s realistically the *only* way you’ll get there. Take a run at real power players, try to flip them, wiretaps, search warrants, and more.

So pointing to 700 rioters and saying “But they’ll work their way up, eventually” is a recipe for an investigation to (1) take forever, (2) never truly reach the power sources, and (3) ultimately fail, but do it in palatable packaging, couched in DOJ boilerplate.

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