I'm not sure Rittenhouse would have been charged at all and, based on how the trial went and how weak the evidence was, he should have, at best, been charged with something much more minor. But that's just one example.
I somewhat agree with you, they are more careful but I think they are more careful in their own process. To make sure their ducks are all in a row. But, when it comes to actually pressing charges or agreeing to plea deals, I think they are much more likely to overcharge or not negotiate so that the case is no longer on their desk and they can say "I did my part".
To use the Rittenhouse example, I think the public expectations of charges impacted the charges because the ones bringing charges are often elected officials (or appointed by them) so there's an incentive to not look at what can be proven with the evidence and instead charge with what the public thinks is "right". The incentive for an elected official is to appease the public with charges, convictions be damned because that's someone else's problem. That's how Rittenhouse's case played out too. Outside of conservative media, there was a lot of attention paid to the judge and the lawyers not being able to prove their case rather than floating the idea that maybe a lesser charge and a conviction was the right thing to do.
On the other hand, I think you saw the same course of events with the George Floyd case but with a different result. The investigation was drawn out and meticulous and charges were brought. That resulted in a conviction but the implication I'm making is that those charges would have been brought regardless of evidence because of the public nature of the case.
In the Rittenhouse case, both prosecution and defence agree that Rittenhouse was a person who had a gun in his arms and fired it, resulting in death. The thing the prosecution needed to prove is that in doing so, he committed a crime. Prior to the trial, it was not necessary to express agnosticism about whether he had a firearm, fired it, or firing it resulted in anyone's death, even if there was some sense in which he was "innocent until proven guilty" of the conduct being criminal.
In this case, there is essentially no room for dispute that stealing $71 million, engaging in a vast money laundering conspiracy is in fact illegal. If these people actually had these accounts and actually used this money in this manner, there is no chance they will not be found guilty. The affidavit is not compatible with a set of the same basic facts leading to a different legal conclusion.
So the question is whether or not you think there's any possibility that the feds cavalierly misidentified the people in possession of these accounts. That seems pretty unlikely, given the affidavit suggests withdrawing small amounts of the stolen money to use Uber under their actual names, buy stuff on PlayStation under their actual names, etc; and that the private keys were taken from a cloud storage account actually belonging to the guy; and that the woman contacted various exchanges and talked about the actual company she actually owns, and the guy actually has a documented record of talking extensively about cryptocurrency including on this site using his actual name.
It is, of course, possible that the entire affidavit is a lie, made up whole cloth and all of this evidence is totally fake and the accused were minding their own business working on their gourmet cupcake business in Kansas City, and they don't understand anything about no crypto-whatsit. But I don't think that's a scenario that really requires much investigation, and it instead is a level of solipsism on par with "we can't actually know if gravity will cause us to fall" or "what if this is a simulation".
What I'm saying is that not all uncertainty is equal, either in kind or in probability, and so it makes more sense to be honest about that than equivocate across very dissimilar cases.
...of a case the US DoJ wasn't involved in prosecuting, because it was prosecuted by a completely separate sovereignty.
Not sure how that's an example of DoJ prosecutorial decision-making.
(And that's even before considering if comparison of actual events in one case to the speakers own stated opinion of how a counterfactual hypothetical would turn out, rather than contrasting real events, is really good evidence of a comparative behavior difference.)
No, if following general DoJ policy, they believe that the evidence is sufficient that they will be able to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, but that's not the same as them already having proven that.
> High profile cases with public pressure change the equation a bit and can cause charges to be brought on people who normally would not.
Usually, I think the opposite is the case: generally, the DoJ is more careful in high-profile cases, not more cavalier.