When James Comey—now famous for his turn as head of the FBI through the 2016 Trump election—was made US attorney for the Southern District of New York, he gathered his prosecutors and asked who among them had never lost a case. When many of the lawyers proudly raised their hands, Comey called them “the Chickenshit Club.” They had only ever turned their enforcement powers on villains who couldn’t defend themselves, rather than prioritizing the worst offenders, whose ill-gotten gains provided them with the war chest they needed to exact huge resource costs from the State of New York if it tried
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