General Discussion

The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery

By sheer coincidence, this ruling concerns the sort of generous ‘gifts’ and ‘gratuities’ that justices have been known to accept

by Moira Donegan
The Guardian, June 27, 2024

Did you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can. In fact, if you’re rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks. You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other “gratuities” are provided after the service, and not before it – and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these “gratuities” is maintained.

That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law. In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that “gratuities” – that is, post-facto gifts and payments – are not technically “bribes”, and therefore not illegal. Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of “gratitude” for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different. The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.

The case concerns James Snyder, who in 2013 was serving as the mayor of small-town Portage, Indiana. Late that year, the city of Portage awarded a contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt, a trucking company, and bought five tow trucks from them; a few weeks later, Snyder asked for and accepted a check for $13,000 from the company. Snyder was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. He argued that the kickback was not illegal because it came after he awarded a contract to the company that ultimately paid him off, not before.

Absurdly the US supreme court agreed, classifying such payments as mere tokens of appreciation and claiming they are not illegal when they are not the product of an explicit agreement meant to influence official acts in exchange for money.

In so doing, the court has narrowed the scope of anti-corruption law for state and local officials to apply to only those exchanges of money, goods and official favor in which an explicit quid pro quo arrangement can be proved. As in Cargill – the court’s recent decision legalizing bump stocks, wherein the court declared that the gun accessories do not render semiautomatic rifles into machine guns based on a lengthy technical explanation of the meaning of a “trigger function” – the court in Snyder has made an extended, belabored foray into a definitional distinction between “bribes” and gratuities.

Continues…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/27/supreme-court-bribes-gratuities-snyder-kavanaugh

Boof Boy Brett Kavanaugh was instrumental in figuring out that pretzel logic.