… while we savor the bread and circuses of Biden’s and Trump’s respective debate performances.
Gift link:
This decision undoes the lawful conviction of James Snyder, a former mayor of Portage, Indiana. He received a kickback of $13,000 for awarding two contracts to provide garbage trucks to the city.
So now, apparently if you call a kickback a “gratuity,” it’s all perfectly fine!
I never want to hear again how John Roberts gives a shit about the “integrity” of his SCOTUS.
This is a horrible decision that is going to do immense damage to our institutions.
Here is a link to the text of the decision:
It’s very worth reading Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent. It begins on page 23.
This majority court is waaaaaay out there. Cherry picking from:
Originalist when that suits,
plain language unless it doesn’t
Historical practice, including going back to pre founding of the US for English (UK) examples
Settle case law until it’s overturned.
ad nauseum
From Ketanji’s dissent: "Ignoring the plain text of §666—which, again, expressly targets officials who “corruptly” solicit, accept, or agree to accept payments “intending to be influenced or rewarded”—the Court concludes that the statute does not criminalize gratuities at all.
Net-net, majority contortions somehow bribes are only if you pay in advance, but fair game as a reward after the fact.
If the Dem’s win a majority in Nov, baby step one is to change from a lifetime appointment to a time limit. Personally, I’d like to see the Supreme’s get paid a cool million per year, with the caveat that they cannot take gifts or money. And if they wanna “teach” in Italy for the summer or give a speech to the the Federalist Society or Greenpeace, they pay their own way. Book deals or become a lobbiest after retirement would be acceptable. And this extends to close family including first cousins, nephews, nieces, etc.
It is fricking appalling at how cheap it is to “influence” a Supreme. Thomas net worth is pegged at USD2 million, and most of that in a pension. Christ, post divorce, I have more cash than that, and I have only been a corporate slave for 30 years.
Truly this court has dumped any pretense at being rational.
Jackson wrote that the ruling relied on an “absurd and atextual reading of the statute” that “only today’s Court could love.”
She argued that the ruling had ignored the plain text of the statute, which targeted officials who “corruptly” received bribes and gratuities “intending to be influenced or rewarded,” and that the court had instead decided the statute did not criminalize gratuities at all.
Of course, John Roberts had already ruled – in the infamous Citizens United ruling – that money is absolutely not, no way, any kind of corrupting influence in politics. In fact when billionaires pour money into bribing and owning legislators in order to shape the political landscape to their liking, why, this is the most beautiful example you could ever imagine of true democracy in action!
One dollar one vote. Just like it has been in every kingdom on Earth before the advent of democracy. Whose twilight we are apparently witnessing. Twilight hell, the Sun is already 2/3rd below the horizon and sinking fast.
“In Illinois, the ruling could potentially impact Blagojevich, whose attorneys are now exploring legal options to potentially set aside his 2009 conviction. The former governor was convicted in a scheme in which he attempted to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by former President Barack Obama.”
McDonnell v. United States was, I thought, the most ridiculous opinion I’d seen regarding statutes against bribery and corruption. I suppose I’m glad to see I can still be surprised.
I’ve been following this since it was in the lower courts. Absolutely ridiculous. Short of a contemporaneous, “OK, if I give you THIS bribe, you will take THAT specific official action,” the game is wide open.
As a longtime federal employee, the years of annual ethics training sure seem quaint, where they debated at length the ethical quandry if you were working late and, “a pizza just appeared!” (That phrasing stuck with me, as I kept waiting for pizzas to “just appear”, perhaps as some quantum phenomena…
As a public employee, I was told even such things as coffee cups or fast food coupons were unacceptable. This is absolutely infuriating, as well as transparent. I also posted this in the Evil MFers thread because this is nothing short of evil.
Thus does the concept of packing the court move evidently from the category of “Executive Overreach” to the ledger headed by “Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Look it’s just common courtesy to tip the help. The 50 percenters tip their hair dressers, the 5 percenters tip their doorman, and the 0.01 percenters tip their congressmen. /s
The Supreme Court ruling means that you can’t promise a politician any sort of compensation in advance. You can’t say “If you give my company this government contract, I’ll write you a check for $800,000.” That would be straight-up kickback bribery, and still a crime.
But what you can do is give the politician a thank-you gift long after the contract deal is over, perhaps ten years down the road - as long as you never communicated any intent to do so before the contract was awarded.
What this means is that straight-up bribery is still illegal, but politicians may increasingly award contracts with some hope of getting a “gift” years down the road. An expectation that can never be legally confirmed by writing or spoken word, but that would now exist more and more.
I don’t know how I feel about this decision yet , but it doesn’t say it’s legal for state and local officials to accept a gratuity after the fact. It couldn’t - this case was only about whether a federal statute applies to gratuities accepted by state and local officials. It does not prohibit state and local governments from regulating whether state and local officials can accept gratuities.
The question in this case is whether §666 also makes it a
crime for state and local officials to accept gratuities—for
example, gift cards, lunches, plaques, books, framed photos,
or the like—that may be given as a token of appreciation
after the official act. The answer is no. State and local
governments often regulate the gifts that state and local
officials may accept. Section 666 does not supplement those
state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local
officials to up to 10 years in federal prison for accepting
even commonplace gratuities. Rather, §666 leaves it to
state and local governments to regulate gratuities to state
and local officials.
I don’t really think the DOJ was indicting people for accepting gift cards , but that’s a slightly different issue.
Plausibly, the laws as written have a giant hole in them that was actively put there by the members of Congress and Roberts simply interpreted them fairly.
You would need to bring out the specific laws and sort of clear your head of any hopes and dreams for them, to really get a sense for which way that leans.
Having not done that work, I’m fairly ambivalent as to which direction it goes.
For the OP case, a description like, “Minus quid-pro-quo, the law allows people to give to politicians (offer a gratuity). With quid-pro-quo, you’re in trouble regardless of whether the payment precedes or post-dates the deed. One way that you can differentiate between quid-pro-quo and a gratuity is that a gratuity is never paid before a deed has been done.” Might be reasonable and gives a much different read of the question.
If that’s a fair reading of the law, then is that the fault of the judges?
