"When Everyone Is Guilty"

How overcriminalized laws and unchecked prosecutors transform ordinary life into potential crimes, turning dissent, public service and journalism into liabilities in a justice system built for control

When I was wasting away in FCI Otisville, time didn’t just crawl; it mocked you. Every day felt like a year, and every night felt like an interrogation by your own thoughts. What saved me, what anchored me to something resembling sanity, were letters. More than 10,000 of them. Handwritten notes from people I had never met, people who owed me nothing, reminding me that I still existed beyond a number stitched onto a khaki uniform. They sent books too. Hundreds of them. And for someone like me; someone who has always believed that knowledge is both shield and weapon, those books were oxygen.

One book, in particular, has stayed with me long after I walked out of Otisville’s gates. Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate. It was written in 2011, but it reads like it was drafted yesterday, maybe even this morning, somewhere inside a federal prosecutor’s office with the lights left on and the Constitution quietly ignored.

The premise is as terrifying as it is simple: the average American, going about their perfectly ordinary day, likely commits multiple federal felonies without ever knowing it. Not because they’re criminals. Not because they’re malicious. But because federal law has metastasized into a bloated, incoherent mass of statutes and regulations so vast and so vague that almost anyone can be caught in its net if the government decides they should be.

That’s the key word: DECIDES.

This isn’t about justice. It’s about power. Prosecutorial power. The kind that allows the government to look at an individual; any individual, and say, “If we want you, we’ll find something.” Silverglate wasn’t being hyperbolic. He was being clinical. Over-criminalization has turned the federal code into a minefield where intent no longer matters, common sense is optional, and discretion is everything.

Even as a lawyer, I didn’t fully grasp how dangerous that was until I lived it.

Here’s the dirty secret: the law is no longer just a set of rules meant to guide behavior. It’s a lever. And when that lever is pulled selectively, it becomes a weapon. Professionals, politicians, activists, journalists; no one is immune. Especially not those who fall out of favor with the people holding that lever.

Which brings me to today.

Donald Trump understands this system intimately. Not from reading books in a prison cell, but from navigating it, manipulating it, and ultimately weaponizing it. He knows exactly how elastic federal law can be when stretched by loyal prosecutors and pliable statutes. And that is precisely why I have said, repeatedly, that people like Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, and frankly anyone who finds themselves in the crosshairs of this administration, are at risk; not because they’ve committed crimes in the traditional sense, but because the system allows crimes to be constructed around them.

If you think that sounds alarmist, look at Minnesota.

The Department of Justice is scrambling to send prosecutors from across the Midwest into Minneapolis, not because crime has suddenly exploded, but because the federal government is gearing up to prosecute protesters and potentially elected state officials. Subpoenas are flying. Governors, mayors, attorneys general; dragged before grand juries under the banner of “impeding federal law enforcement.” That phrase alone should chill you. It’s broad enough to drive a tank through. Or a political agenda.

When federal prosecutors start investigating state leaders for doing their jobs, when staffing shortages are solved not by restraint but by importing more prosecutors, when the focus shifts from examining a fatal shooting by a federal officer to targeting the protester standing next to the victim; that’s not law enforcement. That’s intimidation.

And let’s be clear: the resignations pouring out of U.S. attorney offices across the country aren’t coincidences. They’re warnings. Career prosecutors don’t walk away in droves unless something is deeply wrong. These are people who believe in the rule of law, who understand the difference between enforcing statutes and abusing them. When they leave, they’re telling us something without saying a word. Hell, I wish the prosecutors in my case would have had that courage.

Even journalists aren’t spared. Cover a protest. Ask the wrong questions. Stand in the wrong place at the wrong time. Suddenly, you’re “on notice.” According to this logic, the First Amendment is no longer a right; it’s a suggestion, revocable at will.

This is Three Felonies a Day playing out in real time.

The danger isn’t that Americans are criminals. The danger is that criminality has become whatever the government says it is in the moment. And once that line is crossed, once laws are no longer fixed standards but flexible tools, democracy doesn’t collapse overnight. It erodes. Quietly. Selectively. One subpoena at a time.

I learned in Otisville that freedom isn’t just about walking outside a fence. It’s about knowing that the law can’t be bent to punish you for existing, for dissenting, for doing your job. When that certainty disappears, we are all inmates in waiting.

And the scariest part? Most people won’t realize it until they are stripped down, given prison issued clothing and the cell door closes behind them.

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