[bb88]

Yeah, they do. The US Attorneys and the Attorney General are allowed to give input typically into whether any investigation is prosecutable.

Now did they investigate it? Probably not.

What's interesting to me is that personal phones were not seized for forensic examination though.

Were the phones hacked by foreign agents? What other uses was signal used for?

[dragonwriter]

That's backwards. Prosecutors don't give input, they decide whether to charge. The FBI investigates, but they aren’t the ones who are responsible for taking cases to court.

[bb88]

The FBI makes charging decisions all the time. The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.

Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.

The demarcation line between the two is when the charges are filed in federal court.

Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016. Not because she committed any crime, but because they wouldn't likely get a conviction at trial.

[dragonwriter]

> The FBI makes charging decisions all the time.

No, they don't.

> The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.

They investigate before there are charges.

> Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.

The FBI is part of the DoJ, but there aren't charges until a prosecutor—not an FBI agent—either gets a grand jury to return an indictment or files a criminal information (the latrer only an option for minor offenses or if the defendant waives indictment, usually as part of a plea bargain.) Prosecution isn't a separate thing from charges, it is what charges are.

> Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016.

No, famously Comey announced that the FBI recommended that no charges be filed. Like I said, you have it backwards: FBI makes recommendations, federal prosecutors decide to charge, or not.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-recommends-no-charges-f...

“FBI Director James B. Comey said today that the Bureau has recommended to the Department of Justice that no charges are appropriate following an extensive investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.”

[bb88]

Let's drop this. I do agree with you on Musk being a fascist -- or more specifically the average person might be correct in concluding the Musk is a fascist.

[ModernMech]

> The FBI makes charging decisions all the time. The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.

Have you ever seen law and order? They explain it succinctly in the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMalvNeJFLk

[sophacles]

The FBI is part of the DoJ... they are in fact the investigative arm of the DoJ and both bring the US attourneys evidence of crimes so that the attourneys can do the court work and they go find evidence as requested by the attourneys for ongoing cases. The fact that you're treating them as such separate entitites is indicative that maybe you should learn a bit more about how these things work.