The Supreme Court had severely limited the honest services doctrine in #Skilling v. United States, by deciding that the “intangible” right to honest services required a very
👉tangible exchange of money or property from a person to an official for some precise action as part of a bribery or kickback scheme.
And in United States v. #Sun-#Diamond#Growers,
a case with facts eerily reminiscent of those uncovered in recent Supreme Court ethics scandals,
the justices significantly limited the reach of another public corruption law,
the illegal gratuities statute, 18 USC § 201(c), in similar fashion.
In Sun-Diamond Growers, the Court overturned a conviction against a trade association for giving then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy $5,900 in illegal gratuities–including items such as tickets to the 1993 U.S. Open Tennis Tournament and thousands of dollars of luggage and meals.
The unanimous Court interpreted that statute to apply only to situations where officials accept or are given gifts “for or because of some particular official act.”
♦️Until Sun-Diamond, the government could establish an illegal gratuities violation by showing that a gift was based on the official’s position;
♦️but after Sun-Diamond, prosecutors were required to establish a “link between a thing of value conferred upon a federal official and a specific ‘official act’ for or because of which it was given.”
Based on this analysis, gifts or money,
-- even when they’re given by an advocacy organization to an official explicitly in charge of regulating that advocacy group,
-- are not problems in themselves; rather, they only become problematic when they are linked to a very specific set of actions. @panamared27401
