When will the US DoJ hire a decent PR firm? Again and again during these three years they've made cock-ups that push people (like myself) towards supporting Dotcom even if we don't particularly like the guy, and even if we think for the actual charges he's likely in the wrong.<p>> <i>In the forfeiture case, prosecutors will argue why Dotcom’s claim on the frozen assets should not be allowed—and therefore forfeited to the US government—under the "doctrine of fugitive disentitlement." That idea posits that if a defendant has fled the country to evade prosecution, then he or she cannot make a claim to the assets that the government wants to seize under civil forfeiture.</i><p>Hooray, a loophole in the laws that might let them seize his assets: call him a fugitive! Even though he hasn't visited America one single time in his life. And even though he is still in the country where he calls home, and has done for more than a year before this case started.<p>Maybe it's not the DoJ's fault, maybe Dotcom and his lawyers (and PR) are really, really good. But nearly every story in the past 3 years has made him look good and them look bad, which shouldn't be the case when you've got a government department charged with delivering justice against a guy with a track-record of being an asshole and breaking the law.
This was insightful for me:<p>""Congress, initially as part of the War on Drugs but later expanded to include most federal offenses, criminalized almost every financial transaction that flows from funds that are the proceeds of ‘specified unlawful activity,’" Bruce Maloy, an Atlanta-based attorney and an expert in US extradition law, told Ars by e-mail.<p>"In simplest terms, if you possess funds from a crime and do anything with the money other than bury it in the ground or hide it under the mattress, you have committed a new crime. Spending the money is a new crime, opening a bank account is a new crime. These expenditures do not have to be in furtherance of the original crime, but my recollection is that here it alleged that they are. In short, throwing in a money laundering allegation is quite common in US federal indictments."<p>Page Pate, another Atlanta-based defense lawyer who has also worked on international extradition cases, agreed. "It's almost automatic to add money laundering charges to any offense whether it's drug-related or not," he said. "I haven't seen it that often in criminal copyright cases. The US has been very aggressive in adding money laundering and forfeiture in criminal cases.""<p>Ain't it great, War on Drugs?
1. Because he had a lot of money to spend on lawyers<p>2. Because there are some fundamental issues - slowly getting cleared - on issues of search, procedure, etc<p>3. Because the legal system can take a bloody long time to achieve anything
Tons of money to fight the extradition + him being good at exploiting the US gov hate of the people to make himself look like a freedom fighter instead of the greedy scumbag that he is via well done PR campaigns.