Supreme Court Comes Out in Favor of Bribery

Short version is that if someone offers a gratuity AFTER an official act, it's OK, which sounds a lot like Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito vacation junkets.

They are a bunch of corrupt rat-F%$#s:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a federal anti-bribery law does not make it a crime for state and local officials to accept a gratuity for acts that they have already taken. Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that state and local governments already regulate gifts to officials, and so the federal law “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.”

The question came to the court in the case of James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Ind., who was convicted and sentenced to 21 months in prison for violating the federal law at the center of the case, known as Section 666. That law bars state and local government officials from “corruptly” accepting “anything of value of any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded” for an official act. In 2014, Snyder received $13,000 from a truck company that had recently received contracts totaling over $1 million for new trash trucks for the city. Snyder maintains that the payment was for consulting services, but federal prosecutors called it an illegal gratuity.

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Kavanaugh closed his opinion by noting that “Congress can always change the law if it wishes to do so” – but it has not, since 1986.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. In her view, the plain text of the statute led easily to the conclusion that Section 666 applies to gratuities paid to state and local officials after they have acted. She emphasized that the statute makes it a crime to accept “anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded.” “The term ‘rewarded,’” she contended, “easily covers the concept of gratuities paid to corrupt officials after the fact — no upfront agreement necessary.”

Jackson pushed back against Kavanaugh’s contention that the government’s interpretation of Section 666 could sweep in too much conduct without clear notice to state and local officials. She argued that the law “was not designed to apply to teachers accepting fruit baskets, soccer coaches getting gift cards, or newspaper delivery guys who get a tip at Christmas.” In particular, she wrote, the text of Section 666 itself imposes limits on the scenarios in which it can apply – for example, it applies only when state, local, or tribal governments receive at least $10,000 per year from a federal program, it does not apply to legitimate compensation, and the official who accepts the payment must do so “corruptly.”

The Supreme Court conservatives support bribery because they take bribes.