FIRST ON FOX: With a staggering 99.6% success rate in court, some federal investigations under the Biden administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) are drawing scrutiny for alleged partisan bias and the little-known problem of overcharging — fueling calls for urgent reform among experts.
"We have just lost our damn minds when it comes to criminal prosecution," healthcare defense attorney Ron Chapman told Fox News Digital in an interview. "Ninety-five percent of cases do not go to trial, because prosecutors can find fuzzy statutes to get such high maximums or even mandatory minimums at play, which force innocent people to plead guilty. And that's what we're dealing with — we're dealing with tons of innocent people who may not be innocent of all the crimes, but they're innocent of the ones that were overcharged against them."
Prosecutors commonly charge additional felonies to pressure guilty pleas, Chapman said, which is denounced by the American Bar Association for violating defendants' fair trial rights. Federal prosecutors have a 99.6% conviction rate, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center study. As such, federal investigations result in more pleas and avoid trials altogether.
This week, a Texas doctor was charged by the DOJ with four felonies after exposing the hospital he worked in for allegedly secretly conducting transgender surgical procedures on children. Chapman, a former federal prosecutor for the U.S. Marines Corps, said, "This is a Merrick Garland allegation, guaranteed."
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"This would have had to come from the top," Chapman said. "They're almost asking for a lawsuit for this to go up to the Supreme Court."
Last month, two pro-life activists were sentenced to several years in prison for staging a protest inside a D.C.-based abortion clinic in 2020. Federal prosecutors argued the pro-life activists violated the 1994 FACE Act, a federal law that prohibits physical force, threats of force or intentionally damaging property to prevent someone from obtaining or providing abortion services.
But the targeted investigations didn't start under the Biden administration, Chapman said. Each administration "has their own agenda," and will fulfill it accordingly.
There are stark differences in the types of investigations the DOJ will pursue. Justin Paperny, a federal prison consultant for white collar criminals, told Fox News Digital he's seen an uptick in this administration going after more white collar crimes, compared to the former Trump administration, which was "more pro-business." Professionals in the healthcare sector are also being investigated more thoroughly for fraud schemes.
"We've had fewer drug cases than we had in the prior administration, and probably because it's becoming more normal in this country," Paperny said. "People try to draw this equivalence between Hunter Biden and Trump, but you have to actually question one prosecution versus the other. Everyone has an agenda, and these are things that people are paying more attention to because of this climate."
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Paperny, who previously went to prison in 2007 for financial crimes, said the government will also "pile on more charges" if a defendant pleads not guilty against the government.
"Overcharging, threats of 20 to 30 years in federal prison, could compel someone who truly believes they're innocent, to plead guilty," he said. "So, many of these cases should be handled civilly at worst, not criminal. Yet, we continue to see prosecutions and people going to prison for very long periods of time, especially those who have exercised their right to go to trial."
"These people who are going to trial and fighting it against the odds, it's very inspiring," he said.
Dr. Eithan Haim — who accused the Texas Children's Hospital of secretly performing transgender surgical procedures on minors despite previously claiming they planned to shut down the program after state Attorney General Ken Paxton released an opinion saying the procedures could be considered child abuse under state law — is one of those people who will fight against the DOJ's charges.
"I refuse to back down or to be silenced," Haim said in a post on X.
In December, the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee published a report detailing "the Extent of the FBI's Weaponization of Law Enforcement Against Traditional Catholics," which former FBI agent, Kyle Seraphin, blew the whistle on.
The report said the committee studied the FBI's categorization of traditional Catholic Americans "as potential domestic terrorists" after the FBI’s Richmond memorandum painted "radical-traditionalist Catholics" as violent extremists and proposed opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of "threat mitigation."
"I think it's a bigger problem than people think," Seraphin told Fox News Digital in an interview. "And so my solution is broader than most people are comfortable with, but we spend roughly $11 billion a year on the investigative agency of the FBI, and people need to ask if the $11 billion spent is solving the problems the FBI was created to solve, and it's my argument that that problem doesn't even exist anymore."
"Most Americans don't realize that there could be an active national security investigation on anyone," he said. "That's the thing that should scare the bejesus out of Americans."
On Friday, the DOJ announced that it won't prosecute Obama-appointed Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress over his refusal to turn over audio recordings of Special Counsel Robert Hur's interview with President Biden.
The House voted on Wednesday to hold Garland in contempt, after months of digging by House Republicans to try to bring into public view as much material from the special counsel interview as possible.
The DOJ did not respond to a request to comment by press deadline.
Fox News' Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
