Taken in context with a lot of other... misbehavior by the FBI (like the various near-entrapment "terrorism" cases, for example) this makes me think that the FBI consistently treats the Federal Judiciary as some kind of CYA checklist item, to officially justify punishing people that the FBI has decided should be punished. As long as nothing the FBI does is... illegal, (or exposed) they seem to feel that they have a right or mandate to do it, rules, laws or ethics be damned.