(03-20-2020, 01:57 PM)JagNGeorgia Wrote:

(03-20-2020, 12:14 PM)mikesez Wrote: A defendant in the US system has the right to discover or subpoena anything related to the charges they face. Russia's government pretty clearly intended to use that right to discover our spies and their secrets. US federal courts were not designed to cope with that. A special tribunal would have to be set up if they wanted to pursue these charges further.

The government charged them because they felt they had sufficient evidence to prove their case. They knew beforehand what would be available during discovery. If they didn't want that information available, then they shouldn't have charged them. The courts are fully prepared for that, so I'm not sure where you get the idea that they couldn't "cope" with it. The Russian government had nothing to do with the discovery process and the defendants showing up to prove their innocence. You just said a bunch of random unrelated things.