You said there was always a smoking gun, not that you can find examples where they did. The examples you list are Counterterroism cases and Murder for hire that are rare cases. This was your exact words one page back:
And, yes, the FBI is absolutely given a "smoking gun" in the form of recordings, documents, witness testimony, from someone or something that fills the void and links causality.
Here is the first example in Google of a conspiracy conviction without a recording, etc. They show exactly what I'm talking about, laying out the benefit without a document or recording of the defendants agreeing to a conspiracy -
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/p...cted-conspiracy-and-aggravated-identity-theft
Here is the DOJ News link and the top case listed where they didn't prove conspiracy, they got the guy to plead to a lesser charge:
https://www.justice.gov/briefing-room
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/p...cted-conspiracy-and-aggravated-identity-theft
I think you're obfuscating a bit. What exactly is the point about counterterroism or murder-for-hire? The FBI is not typically not brought in for local candy store robberies. We're talking about federal crimes; they're all serious by default. The point is that the FBI is looking for substantial evidence to hang their hat on, not motive mongering.
Have we abandoned the Stephen Cohen example?
I just read the example you provided (
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/p...cted-conspiracy-and-aggravated-identity-theft).
The three insurance agents were caught
conspiring in doing the following:
- Submitting "applications for life insurance policies on behalf of people at least some of whom did not know that a policy was applied for or issued in their name and/or did not want a life insurance policy."
- Sharing "the commissions and bonuses issued by American Income Life Insurance (AIL) in connection with the fraudulent policies." In other words, the FBI had proof of them sharing the ill-gotten-gains...verifiable evidence.
- Paying "recruiters to find people willing to take medical exams in exchange for approximately $100, and then took the personal information associated with those people and submitted applications for life insurance in their names, in many cases without the individuals’ knowledge."
- The insurance agents fraudulently "opened hundreds of bank accounts to fund the premiums on the fraudulent policies, and typically paid one to four months of premiums before letting the policies lapse."
- "All three defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud."
The charges for conspiracy to commit wire fraud were
all substantiated by points 1-4, or in other words, proof (i.e. smoking guns).
To utilize the same rationale being applied to league bias theory being spun, you'd have to show all three of these insurance agents were convicted based on nothing more than the FBI looking at their bank accounts and surmising "meh, how else would they have gotten that money," leveling charges and actually getting the conviction.
Bringing it back to Goodell/penalties/bias and the Cowboys. I'm still waiting for one piece of actual evidence that substantiates the conspiracy theory to the extent it was demonstrated in the insurance conspiracy fraud case.
