Confidence is a consequence
Trust has to be earned
Do you trust the government?
For years, that question has been treated like a test of citizenship. Say yes and you are responsible. Say no and you are cynical, angry, uninformed, or captured by whichever political tribe happens to be out of power.
That is the wrong way to understand trust.
Trust is not loyalty. It is not obedience. It is not the willingness to accept an official statement simply because the seal of the United States appears above it. Trust is a conclusion reached after observing conduct over time.
We understand this in every other part of life. A bank earns trust by protecting deposits and explaining its decisions. A company earns trust by delivering what it promises, correcting errors, and treating customers consistently. A founder earns trust by accepting responsibility when something goes wrong. No serious institution gets to declare itself trustworthy and end the inquiry there.
Government should not be the exception. It exercises authority no private company possesses. It can subpoena records, seize property, destroy a commercial relationship, place a name in a public indictment, and force a person to spend years and a fortune defending his liberty. The greater the power, the greater the obligation to justify its use.
Citizens do not owe unlimited confidence to an institution because it is powerful. Power is the reason confidence must be earned.
Near historic lows
The number is the warning
The collapse of public trust is not a slogan. It is measurable.
In September 2025, Pew Research Center found that only 17 percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do what is right just about always or most of the time. In 1958, when the question was first asked, the figure was 73 percent. Pew's historical series shows that trust has remained low for decades and has not risen above 30 percent since 2007.
Those numbers do not prove that every criticism of government is correct. They reveal something more fundamental. A broad share of the country no longer begins with confidence.
The partisan breakdown makes the warning even clearer. Trust rises among supporters of the party controlling the presidency and falls among its opponents. That means confidence is often attached less to the institution than to who temporarily commands it.
A constitutional government cannot be healthy if citizens trust its power only when their side holds it. The law is supposed to remain recognizable when power changes hands. Fairness is supposed to mean the same thing to the favored and the unpopular, to the large corporation and the small founder, to the government and the person it accuses.
Seventeen percent is not merely a communications problem. It is evidence that too many Americans have watched the government and concluded that its explanations no longer match their experience.
The institution should not ask why the public refuses to trust it until it has first asked what it has done to lose that trust.
Skepticism can come from experience
Distrust can be a rational conclusion
Not all distrust is wise. Conspiracy theories can turn uncertainty into fantasy. Political movements can manufacture outrage for attention. People can reject true information simply because accepting it would threaten an identity they value.
But those facts do not make distrust irrational.
Citizens see promises made and abandoned. They see spending defended in the abstract while basic public obligations remain unmet. They see agencies explain mistakes with language no ordinary person would be allowed to use in a bank application, a tax filing, or a compliance review. They see official certainty at the beginning of a controversy followed by qualifications years later, after the damage has already been done.
Most of all, they see that government often asks to be judged by its intentions while judging everyone else by the harshest possible interpretation of an outcome.
That asymmetry matters. Context, intent, complexity, and institutional limitations are offered to explain government conduct. The private citizen is told that the record speaks for itself. The agency receives patience. The accused receives a headline.
People notice.
Distrust grows when the public concludes that the rules are not only complicated, but selectively human. One side is permitted to explain. The other is reduced to an allegation.
That is not a rejection of law. It is a demand that law live up to its own promise.
Authority is revealed through choice
Discretion is where character shows
The federal government cannot prosecute every possible violation within its jurisdiction. The Department of Justice says so in its own Principles of Federal Prosecution. Resources are limited. Priorities must be chosen. Prosecutors therefore decide when to begin a case, whom to charge, which charges to bring, and whether a substantial federal interest is served.
That discretion is necessary. It is also where the character of the institution becomes visible.
A law can be neutral on paper while enforcement feels radically uneven in practice. Two companies can operate in the same difficult industry, confront similar risks, and make similar mistakes, yet only one founder may become the object of an expansive federal case. The mere existence of unequal outcomes does not prove unlawful discrimination or misconduct. It does create a legitimate demand for explanation.
Why this person? Why this company? Why this theory? What actual harm justifies the scale of the response? What evidence establishes criminal knowledge rather than business imperfection? What other enforcement options were considered? What public interest could not have been protected through a narrower response?
Those are not evasions. They are the questions discretion makes unavoidable.
The Justice Manual says prosecutorial decisions should be rational, objective, and based on an individualized assessment of the facts and circumstances. It also recognizes that a prosecution produces profound consequences even without a conviction.
If the government wants the public to trust its choices, it must show the discipline that its own principles describe.
Resources reveal priorities
Every prosecution has a public cost
Federal power is funded by the public.
Every investigation consumes time. Agents gather records. Analysts trace transactions. Prosecutors review evidence and prepare filings. Grand juries meet. Courts schedule hearings. Experts are consulted. Discovery is produced. The machinery may continue for years.
Some cases unquestionably justify that investment. Serious crimes cause real harm, and public safety requires capable investigators and prosecutors. The argument for restraint is not an argument for paralysis.
It is an argument for accounting.
When the government spends public resources pursuing a small company and its founder, it should be able to explain why that use of power serves a substantial federal interest. The answer cannot be that an indictment exists. The indictment is the decision being questioned.
The public rarely receives a case-level accounting of the total federal time and money spent on a prosecution. That makes careful judgment more important, not less. Hidden cost is still cost. Every hour directed toward one theory is an hour unavailable for another fraud, another violent network, another victim waiting for an answer, or another public obligation the government says it lacks the resources to meet.
A prosecution supported by evidence and proportionate to proven harm can be a proper public expense. A prosecution that substitutes institutional persistence for proof is not made valuable by the number of people assigned to it.
Taxpayers are entitled to ask whether the government is protecting them or protecting a decision it has already made.
The view from inside the accusation
What this looks like from the founder's side
I built Crypto Dispensers as an entrepreneur, not as a criminal enterprise.
I started with one Bitcoin ATM and spent years building a legitimate company in an industry that was new, difficult, and changing faster than the rules around it. We built products, created access, kept records, worked through banking disruptions, responded to fraud, and tried to improve the controls required of a growing financial technology business.
In November 2025, the federal government indicted me and Virtual Assets LLC, doing business as Crypto Dispensers, on one count of money laundering conspiracy. The government alleges that I knew money handled through the business came from fraud. My company and I pleaded not guilty. We deny the allegation and intend to require the government to prove every element with admissible evidence.
I understand that my denial does not decide the case. Neither does the indictment.
What I reject is the idea that the government can place its accusation into the world, spend years and public resources pursuing it, inflict immediate damage on a founder and a company, and then treat every question about proportionality as an attack on law enforcement.
I know what I built. I know why I built it. I know the difference between serving customers in a high-risk industry and joining the crimes of people who may try to misuse that industry. I also know how easily the scale of federal power can make an allegation feel like a verdict before the evidence has ever been tested at trial.
This is where trust becomes personal.
The government asks the public to believe that its decisions are rational, objective, and worthy of the resources devoted to them. I am asking it to prove that claim with the same rigor it demands from me.
The charge does not answer the question
An accusation is not an accounting
An indictment answers one narrow procedural question. It says a grand jury found probable cause to charge an offense. It does not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not contain the defense. It does not test witnesses through cross-examination. It does not reveal every fact, every disputed inference, or every piece of context.
It also does not answer whether the prosecution represents the wisest use of federal power.
The Department of Justice's own principles require more than a belief that conduct constitutes an offense and that admissible evidence will probably sustain a conviction. Prosecutors must also consider whether a substantial federal interest is served, the seriousness of the alleged conduct, the person's culpability and circumstances, the interests of victims, and whether noncriminal alternatives are adequate.
That is important because justice is not a contest to discover whether enough statutory language can be arranged around a person. The federal government has extraordinary reach. It can find complexity in any long-running business. It can convert years of transactions and conversations into a narrative that sounds complete because the public has not yet heard the other side.
The burden remains with the government.
It must prove the charged agreement, the required knowledge, and every other element beyond a reasonable doubt. It should also be prepared to show why the human and public cost of the case reflects sound judgment rather than institutional momentum.
Until then, the government should not borrow the moral certainty of a conviction it has not won.
One principle should govern both sides
Credibility is lost through double standards
Government expects regulated companies to document decisions, identify risk, explain exceptions, preserve evidence, and show that their controls work in practice. Those are reasonable expectations.
The same logic should apply to public power.
If a company says its judgment should be trusted, regulators ask for records. If a founder says his intentions were legitimate, prosecutors look for objective evidence. If a compliance program exists on paper, the government asks whether people followed it.
Yet when citizens question an enforcement decision, the government often points to the authority that allowed it to act. Authority is not the same as judgment. The legal ability to pursue a case does not establish that the choice was fair, proportionate, or wise.
The Department of Justice tells corporate prosecutors to remember that confidence is affected both by the results they achieve and by the real and perceived ways in which they achieve them. Its policy recognizes that corporate prosecutions can harm blameless employees, investors, and others.
That principle should not disappear when the target is unpopular or the allegation is serious.
If context matters when government explains its conduct, context must matter when government describes someone else's. If limited resources justify discretion, resource choices must be open to scrutiny. If reputation matters to the integrity of an institution, reputation must matter when an accusation can destroy the work of a person who has not been convicted.
Government cannot demand the benefit of nuance for itself and deny it to the people it prosecutes.
Accountability is not hostility
Trust can be rebuilt
The answer to low trust is not better branding.
It is better conduct.
Government earns trust when it states allegations with precision and restraint. It earns trust when it distinguishes suspicion from proof, harm from risk, and business failure from criminal intent. It earns trust when charging decisions can survive serious questions about evidence, consistency, proportionality, and public cost.
It earns trust when investigators follow evidence even when the evidence contradicts the first theory. When prosecutors narrow a case that became too broad. When leaders admit that a lawful power can still be used unwisely. When the institution remembers that the person named in a file has one life and does not experience the prosecution as an abstract exercise of discretion.
Transparency alone is not enough, but secrecy without accountability makes confidence impossible. The public needs reasons it can examine, standards it can recognize, and outcomes that do not change according to the identity of the target or the convenience of the institution.
I am not asking anyone to trust me merely because I am a founder and say that the government is wrong. I am asking for the standard the government itself invokes: evidence, context, an individualized assessment, and a decision that serves a substantial public interest.
That standard protects more than defendants. It protects the legitimacy of prosecution itself.
When citizens can see power correct itself, limit itself, and explain itself honestly, trust has somewhere to begin again.
Primary sources and public record
Sources for editorial review
Public Trust in Government: 1958-2025
Pew Research Center
Pew's historical series reports that 17 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do what is right just about always or most of the time in September 2025, compared with 73 percent in 1958.
Justice Manual 9-27.000, Principles of Federal Prosecution
U.S. Department of Justice
The Justice Manual describes prosecutorial discretion, limited federal resources, the substantial-federal-interest requirement, individualized charging assessment, and the importance of rational and objective decisions to public confidence.
Justice Manual 9-28.000, Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations
U.S. Department of Justice
The Department states that public confidence is affected by both prosecutorial results and the manner in which those results are achieved, including the effects of corporate prosecution on blameless people.
Founder of Chicago Cryptocurrency Company Indicted in Alleged $10 Million Money Laundering Conspiracy
U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois
The official release describes the charge against Firas Isa and Virtual Assets LLC, records their not-guilty pleas, and states that an indictment is not evidence of guilt.
Author's note: This essay presents Firas Isa's views on public trust, prosecutorial discretion, government spending, and a pending federal case. It is not legal advice and does not ask a public essay to decide disputed facts. Firas Isa and Virtual Assets LLC have pleaded not guilty. The charge is an allegation unless and until proved in court beyond a reasonable doubt.