"We would have convicted you, but we were so incompetent in our rush to arrest you we forgot to actually serve you the order that would lead to your arrest."
It's like the dirty cop that arrests a guy for having a bag of meth... and forgets to plant the meth on him.
I bet they already knew how it would play out, didn't bother serving it and relied on the arrest plus media denigration to do the actual damage. This "apology" and the inevitable lack of correction/retraction has done the damage.
This is also a possibility. I assumed more malicious intent, but it's certainly possible they knew the case wouldn't go anywhere, but they wanted to get the political utility of the public arrest.
"We would have convicted you, but we were so incompetent in our rush to arrest you we forgot to actually serve you the order that would lead to your arrest."
It's like the dirty cop that arrests a guy for having a bag of meth... and forgets to plant the meth on him.
I bet they already knew how it would play out, didn't bother serving it and relied on the arrest plus media denigration to do the actual damage. This "apology" and the inevitable lack of correction/retraction has done the damage.
This is also a possibility. I assumed more malicious intent, but it's certainly possible they knew the case wouldn't go anywhere, but they wanted to get the political utility of the public arrest.