You might be attaching some temporal qualities to the phrasing, but that's not how I read the comment. Generally, if you want to make a government investigation go away, you cooperate by demonstrating your innocence. Of course, it's the government's job to prove guilt, but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal, and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're not guilty".
> but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal
You must be joking. That's not how it works when the government has you in their crosshairs.
>and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're not guilty".
And then the government will spend years and millions of dollars trying to poke holes in that evidence of innocence.
Anyone who follows the news has seen this repeated over and over again. Various government authorities routinely engage in witch hunts with little evidence.
Maybe Mansoor Adayfi should've just provided evidence of his innocence after being shipped to Guantanamo Bay? They would have immediately released him, right? What a stupid guy he must have been that it took the government 14 years to release him.
I am talking about white collar crime, which tends to be much more black and white than terrorism. And no, the government doesn't have a history of spending millions in trying to chase frivolous cases. Has it happened? Sure. But prosecutors are graded on their closure rate which is why you see so many settlements. The last thing they want is to waste millions on a witch hunt.
You only see the bad. You say "anyone who follows the news" which means you've probably followed a handful of these...out of the millions of cases which get referred to prosecutors: the vast majority are ignored, the remainder are mostly settled, and a small amount end up in court. Government is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. I'm quite libertarian myself, but let's not concoct ridiculous narratives to affirm our views.
This makes it pretty obvious that you're not arguing in good faith. I guess you would have given Steven Hatfill or Wen Ho Lee the same advice?