“Your honor, we wish to drop charges against the defendants. They’re obviously not taking this seriously, so why should we either?”
I’m not finding a more coherent explanation for the thinking of the Justice Department in opting to drop the Concord entities from their case. If they’re worried that pursuing the matter would necessitate entering classified information into the record, it seems to me that reacting to that by dropping the matter would quickly signal to any other (or future) defendants that this strategy makes an excellent bluff, and none of them will “sincerely prepare a defense for trial” moving forward.
About midway through the article, it’s revealed that the defendants are in Russia and can not be brought before the court. The trial would largely be run in absentia. Furthermore, unless the defendants show up in the US, they won’t feel the sting from any decision against them.
So what’s the use of bringing to trial defendants who won’t show up and won’t be bound by the results? The prosecution only wants to play with the defendants that are trying to play the game, at least a little bit.
It’s worse than that. They were using the discovery phase of the trial to try to ascertain US methods for counterespionage. The prosecutors determined that the counterespionage risks outweighed the benefits of continuing the trial.
