Ethics and legal experts warn that the Supreme Court has dealt a serious blow to prosecutors’ ability to crack down on abuse of power and public corruption.
And that sounds alarm bells as Donald Trump, who was convicted in May by a Manhattan jury of 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records and who was hit with a $355 million fine in a civil fraud trial in February, leads the presidential race.
Experts say the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Snyder v. The United States, which has narrowed the scope of what can be considered an illegal gratuity to a government official, may make it more difficult to prosecute federal employees for accepting bribes. It could also give ammunition to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who is on trial on bribery charges in New York.
And experts warn that the 6-3 majority opinion in Trump v. The United States, which gave the former president immunity for crimes related to his official acts, will make it more difficult to convict Trump on charges related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and could encourage future presidents to skirt criminal laws.
They say the court’s ruling in Trump v. The United States would make it nearly impossible to convict a future president of accepting bribes after leaving office because it would limit the introduction of official presidential actions as evidence in a criminal trial.
Even conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who agreed with most of the majority opinion in Trump v. USA, disagreed in part, warning that “excluding from the trial any mention of the official act linked to bribery would prejudice the prosecution”.
“It will be more difficult to prosecute public corruption charges against public officials,” Kedric Payne, vice president and general counsel of the government ethics watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, said of the Supreme Court’s decision in Snyder.
“This has been a constant in many Supreme Court decisions over the last few decades,” he said.
“Even if it seems like it applies to the state[-level] processes, the next thing to fall is that the whole concept of perks could change,” he said of last week’s decision to allow state civil servants to accept gifts.
The decisions increase tensions between the Supreme Court and Democrats in Congress, who say the court is “out of control.”
And the rulings expose the court’s conservative justices to further criticism for taking a lax view of government and judicial ethics.
“There is a very worrying cynicism and belief that in order for public servants to do their jobs, they must somehow be above the law. Of course the court doesn’t say that…but what it is doing is, in a very real sense, paralyzing one of the most significant checks on abuse of power,” said Dan Weiner, director of elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice. he said of decisions on presidential immunity and bonuses to government officials.
“I think everyone has always assumed that if the president took bribes for official action, he or she could be prosecuted, but… the logic of this case would undermine any effort to hold the president accountable for taking bribes,” he said of the president’s decision. of Supreme Court John Roberts in Trump’s immunity case.
“One thing this decision does is further hollow out protections against high-level government corruption, and that is deeply concerning given the norms that have collapsed around self-dealing at the highest levels in recent years,” he said. .
Weiner said the justices’ decision in the Trump immunity case and the second case, Snyder v. United States, threatens to “undermining fundamental safeguards against corruption against the highest levels of government and some of the lowest levels of government.”
Roberts ruled in Trump v. United States that former presidents “have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts” and, with regard to the exercise of fundamental constitutional powers, must have “absolute immunity”.
In the case of Snyder v. United States, conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote that federal law does not make it a crime for state and local officials to accept gifts or “gratuities” to reward their actions. Instead, he said it’s up to state and local governments to regulate bonuses to state and local officials.
That case involved former Portage, Indiana, mayor James Snyder, who in 2014 received a check for $13,000 for consulting services from a garbage trucking company after the city awarded lucrative contracts to the company the previous year.
Kavanaugh’s majority opinion has raised concerns and criticism among legal experts and government watchdog groups at a time when two conservative Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have come under scrutiny for accepting lavish gifts and hospitality from wealthy benefactors. .
“The trend has been for this court to continually weaken the ability of U.S. attorneys… to prosecute corrupt public officials. This is not good,” said Virginia Canter, counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
She said laws and prosecutions against public corruption are necessary “to ensure that government officials at all levels of government are held accountable when they engage in corrupt activities.”
“It’s really the court’s bias that concerns me most,” she added.
Jeffrey Robbins, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts who is now a partner and chairman of Saul Ewing’s congressional investigations practice, said the court’s decision in Snyder “will add fuel to those who are concerned about the court’s credibility ”. it is continually being eroded.”
The Supreme Court’s rulings were met with harsh criticism from Democrats in Congress, who demanded for months that Roberts implement an enforceable code of ethics for himself and his fellow justices.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chairman of the Federal Courts and Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee, republished two media analyzes criticizing the court’s decision in Snyder.
“I’m not alone in thinking that if judges weren’t steeped in stinky gifts and bonuses from billionaires, they might not be rewriting anti-corruption laws to protect public officials who receive stinky gifts and bonuses,” he posted on the social platform. X.
Whitehouse also criticized the conservative justices on Monday, arguing that their decision in the Trump case would open the door to “a criminal president, who would commit treason for the right price.”
Robbins said the court’s decision in the state-level bonus case could have an impact on Menendez’s corruption trial in the Southern District of New York.
“While he is being accused of accepting bribes, I do not know whether or not among the evidence presented to the court there is evidence of post-favour compensation. If, amid all this, there is evidence of post-favor compensation, then you can expect the defense to argue that there should be a mistrial,” he said.
More broadly, he said “the optics are not good because the scope of this ruling is that compensation or remuneration or generosity or benefits conveyed after an act are not crimes,” he said.
“There is no need [prominent legal theorist Laurence] Tribe to note that people will notice that there are judges under scrutiny for accepting largesse,” he said about how the Snyder case could impact the Supreme Court’s reputation. “It will not go unnoticed by others that this is essentially a judicial wash applied to post-act generosity.”
Robbins, however, argued that members of Congress would not be able to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents substantial immunity for crimes related to official acts to argue in court that their own official acts deserve protection due to the separation of powers. of the Constitution between the branches.
“The decision focuses not just on the separation of powers, but on the specific power of the executive branch and the president in particular,” he said. “It is, as the court points out, an assessment of the scope of presidential power under the Constitution.
Robbins predicted that “we will almost certainly see defendants in corruption cases involving other federal, state and local officials” invoking such a defense and asking, “‘Why should it be any different for the president and for us?’”
“I think this will be resolved very quickly by the courts,” he added.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
