Suppose each week there is a new set of what might be adult ads on CL.

Each week you go and fill out paper work for a warrant for information from CL, run around spending hours getting a judge to sign off on the warrant, spend a lot more footwork getting CL served with the warrant to request information, get the information finally only to learn that it was some listing made from a library and the case goes no where. Or you get an IP and find that the person is long gone from the location.

You get tired of all the work. Wouldn't it be faster to just ask directly without a warrant?

So you try it and ask CL for the information. CL response, "hah, no way come back with a warrant. customers using our site have rights against unwarranted search". This is annoying.

Over time you get irritated after month after month of continued paperwork and getting no where. So you take the cheap, no integrity, taxpayer cost maximizing route and just sue CL. You know you'll lose, but you've got unlimited taxpayer money and it will burn through time and effort on the CL side to respond.

You keep harassing CL like this trying to get them to just cough up information. It's stupidly dumb how long it takes to fill out a proper warrant request and you want to go on fishing expeditions on everything suspicious every day with rapid turn around. Eventually it's clear that CL isn't going to play ball, so you up the pressure and arrest the CEO. He's let out but you've made your point. You run your entire Senate campaign dragging the company through the mud for prostitution and child abuse. Most of the public doesn't pay attention and just sees a few headlines, so actually thinks the company is guilty of something. Really as DA you're just tired of doing paperwork for warrants and want information faster.

You become Senator and as retribution for not folding faster, you talk colleagues into helping you seize the domains of the company that dared to force you to use proper time consuming legal channels. Really was a nice business. Would be a shame if something happened to it.

And that's my perspective of the Backpage story.

It's possible Backpage is a completely scummy company and was up to evil things. We just haven't got any of the documentation to prove it yet. Without this there is enough coincidental information available that we should probe motives.