The following excerpt is from United States v. Thomsen, 830 F.3d 1049 (9th Cir. 2016):
It is true, as the government argues, that the prosecution has the discretion to decide what charge to file when more than one statute prohibits the conduct in question. United States v. Batchelder , 442 U.S. 114, 12324, 99 S.Ct. 2198, 60 L.Ed.2d 755 (1979) (This Court has long recognized that when an act violates more than one criminal statute, the Government may prosecute under either so long as it does not discriminate against any class of defendants.); accord United States v. Maes , 546 F.3d 1066, 1068 (9th Cir. 2008). That argument strikes us as beside the point, however, in the context of a group of related statutes, where it would be particularly odd to construe two provisions to state duplicate prohibitions on some of the same conduct involving some of the same documents.
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