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Notes -
What actually gets me is a different question: Why the hell is the US attorney even making calls like that? My general takeaway is that the US Government would greatly benefit by following the process most local prosecutors offices have: Police investigate crimes, sometimes they come to the prosecutors for things like subpoenas, search warrants, and legal advice, but largely they investigate cases on their own. THEN they present findings to the prosecutors who decide which charges best apply to the case. The prosecutor then files those charges and gets a grand jury to indict it (or very rarely they will deliver a no true bill, at which point the case is dead). This whole situation of prosecutors actively participating in the investigation of crimes and negotiating with defense counsel before investigations are concluded and charges are filed is just begging for corruption to enter into the process.
No, that is bad and stupid. They should not be meeting with defense until after charges are filed. If defense convinces you that the most serious charges are legally insufficient, you can move to have them dismissed and proceed on the lesser charges instead. This happens as a matter of course in state trials. A defendant may be charged with First Degree Murder, and then plead to 2nd Degree, or Manslaughter in exchange for dismissal of the higher charges. The US Attorneys seem to have tied themselves into knots with odd self-imposed regulations that seem to only serve two purposes: 1) Enable corruption; and 2) Keep their caseloads low by refusing to prosecute cases they might lose.
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