We can call it by many names - lobbying, campaign contributions, gifts, free speech.
Do not, under any circumstances call it corruption or bribery, those words have been replaced!
Do not, under any circumstances call it corruption or bribery, those words have been replaced!
You’re conflating civics 101 actions. Lobbying is non-cash. Campaign contributions and PAC contributions are cash but not personal. All of the above are related to free speech.
Gifts are personal. That is what this article describes. Companies can legitimately provide gifts to electeds; think of sending samples to a committee considering regulating your company. This obviously doesn’t look like that. But playing dumb with basic civic terms doesn’t advance the conversation. (And if you legitimately don’t understand the difference between these terms, it shouldn’t take more than an hour to educate yourself.)
What ruling?
Generally, no, accepting gifts in exchange for official actions is illegal (and punished) irrespective of whether payment is made up front or in arrears [1].
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-senator-robert-menen...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_v._United_States
The only thing the Supreme Court decided in that case was whether that specific statute encompasses a gratuity theory. That’s illegal for federal officials under a different statute that was not invoked in this case.
There will be different state laws, but the federal law is particularly toothless at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_v._United_States?wpr...
Untrue per the “legal citations” section of your own article.
Scope was narrowed. But in the two times it was tested the precedent ultimately resulted in a conviction (Menendez) or upholding of punishment (Cash for Kids).
Just because someone has been caught doesn't mean the law isn't significantly weaker than it should be. Menendez is a good example for this. This isn't the first time he's been brought up on bribery charges, it's the second. The first was dropped because of the McDonnell ruling.
Really, you pretty much have to be the dumbest most corrupt politician imaginable before you are caught in this law's net. McDonnell shows what bribery can look like and it's pretty egregious.
McDonnell was hosting and publicly promoting products from Star Scientific while receiving lavish gifts from them. Rolexs, loan, vacations, etc. Do you think if something that would harm Star Scientific came across McDonnell's desk he wouldn't act in their favor? Yet because he doesn't specifically say "I'm doing this for you guys" it's legal.
That's why the law is toothless. So long as a politician isn't an absolute moron like Menendez, they are free to accept "gifts" from anyone for anything. They just can't then turn around and write down "Oh, ok, I'll make sure to pass bill 123 for you"... like Menendez did.
I agree. But toothless means toothless. The snare still catches.
The law needs to be tighter. But to do that we should be able to agree that the current law is weak. Not toothless. If it’s toothless, there is no point clamping down.
I'd count these gifts/jobs given after the official retires the same. To that end, a generous pension wouldn't be out of line imo.
Under federal law, as applicable to federal officials, there’s a distinction between bribes and gratuities. Both are illegal for federal officials, under different statutes. There is also a federal law that makes it illegal to pay bribes to a state official. But there is no corresponding federal law making it illegal to pay bribes to a state official, though most states have their own gratuities laws. This distinction between bribes and gratuities is well established in the law. Bribes are about actual corruption. Gratuities are about the appearance of corruption.
A bribe can be prosecuted whether the payment is before or after the official act. But there must be some proof that the payment influenced or was meant to influence the official act. Paying a Christmas gift to your mailman is not a bribe.
What happened in the recent Supreme Court case is that federal prosecutors prosecuted a state official under the federal bribery statute, where the official was paid for consulting services after allegedly steering government contracts to a trucking company. The prosecution could have tried to prove that the contracts were steered in anticipation of the later consulting work.
The prosecution, however, chose not to proceed on a bribery theory. It asserted that the statute (which is titled “bribery”) applied to gratuities as well. And when the jury was instructed on the law, the jury was specifically told that it did not need to find that the official act was influenced by the anticipation of receiving future consulting business.
All the Supreme Court decided was that specific statute did not cover a gratuities theory. It sent the case back to the trial court; the government can now choose to retry the person and this time try to actually prove bribery.
It’s a jumble caused by well-placed concerns around money in politics being written about by misinformed journalists [1]. Then the term gained political cachet on the left and, more recently, far right, which propagated its mis-use.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_State...
I used meals, but there are lots of other hidden bribes. A common bribe is donate to my favorite charity - in some cases the CEO of the charity is the politicians brother in law (the is somewhat obvious) - but even if the charity is legitimate the donation can still be a bribe if the politician really believes in the cause.
Ticket master of course can give someone a ticket with a face value of $49 - even though the show is sold out and the real street value is over $1000 (from the few scalpers you can find).
It is all bribery, plain and simple.