Why don&#39;t they just issue search warrants for Steve Bannon&#39;s documents? One of the contempt charges Bannon face is for not handing over documents to the Jan 6th committee. Why can't they just issue search warrants for every location remotely-associated with Bannon and get them themselves? Why do they need Bannon to turn them over?
First, let's be clear about who &quot;they&quot; is. Neither Congress nor the Department of Justice has the power to issue search warrants by themselves. Search warrants are issued by judges, upon a showing of probable cause by the prosecution. In particular, search warrants can only be issued in criminal investigations. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 41c: (c) Persons or Property Subject to Search or Seizure. A warrant may be issued for any of the following: (1) evidence of a crime; (2) contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed; (3) property designed for use, intended for use, or used in committing a crime; or (4) a person to be arrested or a person who is unlawfully restrained. I don't think Bannon's documents fit any of those criteria at this time. The Congressional investigation is not a criminal investigation, and I'm not aware that it's currently being alleged that the documents contain evidence of a crime. Bannon himself is charged with a crime - contempt of Congress - but the actual content of the documents isn't relevant evidence in that case. As I understand it, the prosecution only has to prove that the subpoena was properly issued, and that Bannon failed to respond to it, which latter I don't think is disputed. What is actually in those documents, or indeed whether they even exist, is immaterial to his guilt or innocence on that charge.
I am assuming you are not the councilor. Civil matter you have no standing. The councilor does. Maybe the hotel bar does. I can’t think of anyone else who does. Criminal matter If a crime was committed in DC, the DC prosecutor is under no obligation to prosecute it. As a political matter, if you were a citizen of DC you could complain and try to get the prosecutor voted out next election. Political matter As a citizen of your city, it is a political matter: You call your councilman* or any city councilman really and ask them to begin impeachment or whatever similar action you have there. Then next election to try to get the mayor voted out. If you are unsatisfied with the council, try to get them voted out also. The cost of investigation is a cost of running a government. Someone could have chosen not to spend seven grand investigating a hundred bucks, but they did it. *Note this is called petitioning for redress which is the right that the current SCOTUS nominee could not recall off the top of her head.
Firstly, because there isn't an explicit Constitutional &quot;right to privacy&quot;, per se, and even if there was (and there are arguments that several constitutional provisions amount, in aggregate, to a right to privacy), that it wouldn't be absolute, in the same way that freedom of speech and of the press are not absolutes. Indeed, the closest thing to a right to privacy, the 4th Amendment, has explicit caveats: &quot;The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.&quot; (emphasis mine). Thus reasonable searches and seizures, especially those authorized by a warrant, are constitutional. Furthermore, even in light of a constitutional right of privacy derived from this statue, depending on how the &quot;search history&quot; is compiled, the 4th Amendment might not even apply, due to the Katz doctrine, also known as the &quot;open fields&quot; doctrine. Basically, the 4th amendment (as far as searches goes) does not apply to things that are publicly observable; while this would protect a literal &quot;search history&quot; compilation (baring a reasonable search), the searches themselves are public queries, broadcasted over the internet. Anyone watching could compile them into a &quot;search history&quot; themselves.
Although the USA don't like it, there's a department called INTERPOL which is composed by about 150 countries. When a crime is committed and you need to involve another country to solve it, the sovereignty of each County prevents a police officer from one country acting upon another country. That's when the INTERPOL comes in. They usually requests the police from that country to act up. A judge from that country will grant their local police access to the data to be delivered to the country that requested it. Can the police get a search warrant for data 'in the cloud'? Yes. If the servers are located within the boundaries of your own country, it's a normal procedure. But like the above answer states, it's easier to subpoena the records than to execute a search warrant. In a subpoena, the company itself is bound to provide everything the police asks. Can the police get a search warrant for such third party systems? Yes. If there's enough probable cause, the investigation can lead to allow the police to try and discover files that are held by servers that store the cloud data. But if the servers are located outside the country and the company does not have any office opened in the country, a search warrant won't have validity in another jurisdiction and the police can't act without breaking the sovereignty principle. That's where the INTERPOL services are handy. The department is built in the principle of polices from different countries helping each other. The downside is that it's too bureaucratic and it takes a lot of time. For instance if he has a virtual machine hosted by Amazon, would they serve the warrant on Amazon, or on the suspect? Like mentioned by @Viktor, if the company has an office within the bounds of your country, it's easier to subpoena the records because that way the company will filter and provide only the data linked to the suspect being investigated. That is, the subpoena will have both the name of the company (Amazon) and the name of the Suspect, so the company can provide only the necessary files. Update If the police lack sufficient evidence for a search warrant, but an interpol country was, for some reason, willing to work with the police to collect and provide that information would they be able to use it even if they wouldn't have been able to subpoena a US country? Hypothetically speaking, I see your follow-up as a company that do have a local office and the Federal Police was turned down by a judge on a warrant/subpoena. In that case, there's no reason for another's country police to act on their own country. The suspect is a foreign suspect, the crime is a foreign crime and the police has no reason to work on it. But for the sake of argument, let's say that the local police was turned down by a judge for lack of evidence or something and the suspect has been investigated by a foreign country or whatever. If the information that the local police desires to obtain is available through the INTERPOL, it's most likely to be accepted since it's a data stored by an international police department. In your scenario, the foreign police was granted a legal right to search and collected the data for legal purpose. Maybe they can't use it in their own country, but since they followed a safe chain of custody and provided the information to the INTERPOL, that information has legal validity and it is not fruit of the poisonous tree if the chain of custody was maintained.
So my answer depends heavily on a clarification. Are the Police Suspicious or do they have a warrant? This is a big difference in the two behaviors as the former is not a thing, from a strictly legal perspective, and the police should not be harrassing Bob, who doesn't want to talk to them, when they should be making calls to get a warrant (If the police think Bob is being disorderly, they will arrest him and Bob should zip it, get an attorney down to the station, and let the Lawyer yell at the cops... and the judge... and the prosecutor and whoever else... If it's the latter case, they don't need to ask Bob to have Bob come outside... they can kick in the door and arrest Bob or remove him as part of executing the warrant. That's why you have them. In the situation as described, it reads like there was some crime in the area and the police think Bob may have some knowledge about it (he need not have done it, they could be looking for a witness). Bob does not have to say anything to the cops as per his rights against self-incrimination, so Bob tells them he does not wish to speak to them, possibly in an irksome manner and the Police won't take no for an answer. Perhaps they really think Bob might be the criminal... this doesn't necessary mean they have evidence to arrest Bob on. Perhaps Bob was identified by a guy off of security camera footage... maybe it was Bob, or maybe it was Bob's evil twin he never knew about and Bob's been home all night Keeping Up With The Kardassians (anyone knows Bob knows he can't stand going a week without knowing what Kim and Kanye are doing). Either way, it could be enough for a search warrant but just wanting to talk without a warrant, Bob can refuse and they need to respect that. Again, it's probably a bad faith arrest, but the street is not the place to have that fight... save it for the courts.
Laws are different around the world and you didn't bother to state your location, but typically no- this is not how the system works. What would be the point? There's no defendant. You, the plaintiff would argue against thin air and then what? The court rules in your favour, declares this illegal, and nothing happens because there's no defendant. Is it so you can use this ruling if you find out later? Pretty sneaky. Let's look into how this would actually work. You bring up a case- Jackson vs a mannequin or something. You make your arguments. The defense makes literally no defense. The judge rules in your favour, with a result of nothing as there is no defendent. Next, you find the culprit and bring a case against them. You point out that this is illegal because we came to that decision last week. What's that defendant? An argument against it being illegal? Too bad, the decision has been made. When I posted this answer, it was before the &quot;Nyah, I was ranting about government spying but was deliberately vague- aren't I clever?&quot; comment and I assumed it was against, say, a neighbour but it doesn't really matter. You cannot have a system that makes a judgement without a defendant so it can be applied later.
&quot;Legal problem&quot; is too vague to be included. &quot;Investigation&quot; needs a bit of refining; &quot;lawsuit&quot; is relatively simple (as long as you mean &quot;actual lawsuit&quot; not &quot;idea that maybe we could sue&quot;). There is no central list of all lawsuits against a given party, but you could theoretically check every jurisdiction to see if there is a lawsuit. That's a really big list, maybe in the millions if you want to be complete. You can use ordinary Google search to find announced lawsuits, typically by government agencies. Finding investigations is even more difficult: you will not be able to determine what investigations I am conducting. Even determining the existence of investigations by police including e.g. the FBI is hard to do. A government attorney is the one most likely to reveal that they are investigating some party with the intent to sue them. Again, you can't get a complete list, you can use Google to get an indication of who has announced an investigation (your results will generally not say whether the investigation was closed, unless you pursue that question as well).
The Commander-in-chief powers are quite broad. The War Powers Resolution limits his ability to engage unilaterally in military action, by requiring him to report to Congress within 48 hours, and if Congress disapproves, troops must be removed after 60 days. However, this law pertains to armed forces, and would not apply to remotely-launched missiles. Additionally, it is unknown if the resolution is unconstitutional (presidents say it is). No law at all requires POTUS to obtain permission from someone else, in order to engage in a military action. Article 90 of the UCMJ states that it is a punishable offense to "willfully disobeys a lawful command of his superior commissioned officer". The manual also states that An order requir­ing the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime. Murder of a civilian is an example. It also says The lawful­ness of an order is a question of law to be deter­mined by the military judge. "Shocking the conscience" is not a grounds allowing disobedience. One can only conjecture how a military judge would evaluate the lawfulness of a presidential order, when there is not a shred of legal evidence that such an order is in fact illegal: I conjecture that the order would be found to be lawful.