We literally give accused child rapists and serial killers due process. Are you suggesting that's a mistake, or that people accused "Personal cronies of a foreign adversary" are somehow worse?
As Dan Carlin said, what's terrible about authoritarian countries is that fighting them forces you to act like them. If we set ourselves boundaries only we follow, we're doomed to lose.
Following the regular process just gives an advantage to the enemy because he knows he can just put all his foreign assets in the hands of private oligarchs and we'll have our hands tied behind our backs by our own noble principles.
If we don't act bluntly (like confiscating oligarch wealth) we have no leverage at all.
We _can_ afford to give rapists proper due process because society still functions afterwards. But look at what happened during the height of Mafia power. Both Italy and the US had to change the regular due process (RICO, Maxi Trial) because it cannot work when individuals are conspiring behind the scene.
And Russia functions as a giant mafia state.
Have the courts freeze the assets of the accused when there is that risk.
The OP claimed that due process is impossible, so I showed how it can work. Funding or plotting genocide would probably be a serious crime anyways, so why not have a proper trial instead of cutting corners?
A functioning justice system is the bedrock of democracy, and it's the last place where you'd want to be making shortcuts. Not only would missteps cause reputational damage for democracies, it's going to ultimately hurt you too.
I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
If you're approaching this from a consequentialist perspective, would you also be for preemptively seizing billionaire's assets the moment they're accused of kicking a puppy or whatever? After all, it's "also not a huge grievance in the grand scheme of things, so it's not really a thorny ethical problem".
>I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
Sounds great in theory until one day you're declared an elite[1]. Apparently 16% of peasants were considered kulaks in 1912, although the definition was later changed by the Bolsheviks so I'm not sure how much % actually got persecuted. Regardless I'd say the typical HN reader is at a risk of being considered a kulak.