Graham McCready's private prosecution of Trevor Mallard has already been criticised for being a vindictive abuse of the legal process for purely political ends, but now it's managed to reach a new low, with McCready trying to extort a $100,000 "donation" to one of his charities in exchange for dropping the case and offering diversion. So much for any claim that this is about justice. Rather, it is about victimising a public figure and subjecting them to disproportionate penalties for an offence neither the victim nor the police believe is worth prosecution. I know private criminal prosecution is occasionally a check on police inaction (e.g. in the case of Gerry Brownlee, where the police refused to press charges against him for a reasonably serious assault because he was a public figure and the victim an obnoxious lefty), but this is really dragging the whole process into disrepute.