The theory of the warrant and individualized suspicion
In the excerpts, probable cause is presented as the constitutional condition that must be met before the government may search or seize property. Mike Greenberg, a guest on the show, states the theory directly: property is one’s castle, and the government cannot search or invade it without a judicially authorized warrant supported by individualized probable cause that the person has done something wrong or that evidence of wrongdoing is on the property. He emphasizes that the warrant must be issued by a judicial officer. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
Bob Zadek frames this as the system of checks and balances in process. He describes the theory as requiring a judge sworn to enforce and defend the Constitution to be convinced that there is reason to single out a particular person before police may kick down a door and seize property. In his telling, the police cannot act merely because they dislike someone; they must persuade an independent official that there is a reason to single out a specific house and property. He calls this the system on paper and says it ought to work. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
The excerpts do not trace the origins of the probable cause requirement beyond the Fourth Amendment itself, which Bob Zadek dates to 1791. Greenberg describes the requirement as individualized probable cause, meaning suspicion directed at a particular person or place rather than a general warrant to search wherever the government chooses. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
Civil asset forfeiture and the lower threshold
The Timbs v. Indiana episode presents civil asset forfeiture as a context in which the probable cause standard operates differently from the criminal process. Sam Gedge, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, describes civil forfeiture as allowing state, local, and federal governments to take cars, cash, and homes often without even convicting or charging the owner with a crime. He notes that the burden of proof is often lower than a criminal conviction, and that the same agencies deciding whether to take property often stand to benefit financially from doing so. Awaiting the Verdict in Timbs v. Indiana (2018)
Bob Zadek, in that episode, describes the federal equitable-sharing program as a work-around that lets local or state police who seize property hand the money to the federal government, which proceeds under more lenient federal procedures and then funnels much of the money back to the same state and local agencies. He calls the federal government the uber fence and says property can be taken from people who are only alleged to have committed a criminal act, without proof or conviction, only probable cause. Awaiting the Verdict in Timbs v. Indiana (2018)
Gedge confirms that equitable sharing raises another facet of the problem: some states have tried to create checks on the worst abuses of civil forfeiture, but the federal government offers a work-around under which local police can proceed under more lenient federal procedures. He describes the financial incentive as one of the most dangerous aspects of civil forfeiture nationwide. Awaiting the Verdict in Timbs v. Indiana (2018)
The Timbs episode does not describe the facts of Tyson Timbs’s seizure in terms of probable cause. Gedge says Timbs was an addict, not a drug dealer, who sold a very small amount of heroin to undercover officers and was convicted of a low-level drug offense; police then seized his new car. The excerpt does not state what standard or showing supported the seizure of the car. Awaiting the Verdict in Timbs v. Indiana (2018)
The raid on U.S. Private Vaults
The later episode, Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited, applies the probable cause framework to a specific raid. Greenberg describes the government’s conduct as violating the Fourth Amendment because it went after people’s things without any individualized probable cause as to those people. He says the FBI conducted a raid and then moved for a mass forfeiture action against $80 million in cash. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
Greenberg explains that his clients had done nothing wrong but had to identify themselves to the FBI and then heard nothing for weeks. He says the FBI had no real process for returning people’s things and, unbeknownst to the clients who had valuables worth more than $5,000, was planning to move for forfeiture rather than return the property. His firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven people whose property the FBI had seized and was not returning. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
The legal theory Greenberg advances is that the government cannot use a warrant for one place as a pretext to search other places for which it lacks probable cause. He describes the case as standing for the principle that if the government has reason to think someone who owns an apartment building is conducting a drug sale out of the main office, that does not give the government license to search and seize the contents of every apartment in the building despite not thinking anybody in any particular apartment did anything wrong. He calls this a really important Fourth Amendment principle. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
Greenberg says the government’s notice to his clients did not identify any particular crime they were thought to have committed. His firm filed a request with the court asking the government to be more specific or return the property. The government could not get more specific because the clients had not done anything wrong, and eventually the court said the government needed to put up or shut up, and the property was returned. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
The return was gradual. Greenberg says the raid was in March 2021, and the last of his clients got their things back in October. He describes clients coming to the FBI office in Los Angeles to retrieve grocery bags filled with precious metals, and two agents offering to accompany them to their car because there were homeless people in the area who might rob them. Greenberg says civil forfeiture turns the police into robbers. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
The continuing fight over records and the Ninth Circuit
Greenberg says the case continued even after his clients got their property back because the government had taken details, notes of documents and heirlooms, and had held debit and credit cards up to the camera, and would keep a record of that forever. He wants a court to declare that going into the boxes at all and lying to the magistrate judge violated the Fourth Amendment, and that the government must destroy the records it created. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
He reports that the court issued an initial decision ruling that what the government did was close enough to an inventory search, so no Fourth Amendment violation. He calls that ruling confounding and says the case is being appealed to the Ninth Circuit, with an opening brief due the following month. He says the government’s dragnet search of people’s property when it had no individualized probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment, and that the government cannot lie to a magistrate judge in obtaining a warrant. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
Bob Zadek summarizes the aim as using atrocious facts to create a useful precedent to rein in at least a small part of policing for profit. Greenberg agrees, saying every American’s constitutional rights are at stake when the government can search one place it has probable cause for and use it as a pretext to search other places it does not have probable cause for. Civil Asset Forfeiture Revisited (2023)
Across episodes
The two episodes treat probable cause as the same constitutional requirement but in different settings. In the Timbs episode, Sam Gedge and Bob Zadek describe civil asset forfeiture as a system in which property can be taken on allegation alone, with a lower burden of proof than a criminal conviction and with financial incentives for law enforcement, and Bob Zadek notes that the federal equitable-sharing program lets local police proceed under more lenient federal procedures. In the later U.S. Private Vaults episode, Mike Greenberg describes a specific raid in which the FBI searched boxes without individualized probable cause and moved toward mass forfeiture, and he frames the legal fight as one to establish that a warrant for one place cannot be used as a pretext to search other places. The excerpts do not show the earlier episode discussing the U.S. Private Vaults case or the later episode discussing Timbs v. Indiana.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the holding of Timbs v. Indiana, the amendment on which that case turned, or the outcome of the Ninth Circuit appeal in the U.S. Private Vaults litigation. They do not give the name of any bill, the state in which any city is located, or the founding date of the Institute for Justice. The excerpts also do not describe the legal standard for probable cause in criminal cases beyond the general theory of individualized suspicion, and they do not state what showing, if any, supported the seizure of Tyson Timbs’s car.