Everyone, including Republicans, has been expecting that 2006 would be the year that a long line of corrupt lawmakers and other public officials would be walked off to jail after being convicted in the Abramoff scandals.
But thanks to a new court ruling, without clarification from Congress, this could just be the year that all those officials walk.
Today the Washington Post published a remarkable story about how the obscure prosecution of one dirty Washington, D.C. cop may just have eliminated the ability of federal prosecutors to convict lawmakers (not just Abramoff himself) of bribery in the Abramoff scandal and similar cases.
According to one of the judges involved, the case legalized "pay-offs."
The cop was convicted of bribery for conducting searches of a police database and turning the results over to someone who turned out to be an undercover FBI officer, in implicit exchange for money. But an appeals court just overturned the conviction, arguing that the database searches did not constitute "official acts" within the meaning of federal bribery statutes.
And therein lies the issue: what constitutes an "official act" for purposes of bringing bribery charges? With this case, that question has been thrown wide open, according to legal scholars.
And now clever defense attorneys in the Abramoff scandal can argue, probably with some success, that a member of Congress pressuring a businessman to donate money isn't bribery or illegal.
According to Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, who wrote a dissent in the case:
"In Mexico, they call it 'la mordida' (literally, 'the bite'); in Iran, 'bakhshish'; and in France, 'pot-de-vin.' Here in America, we call it a 'payoff' and, today, the majority calls it lawful."
A willing Congress and President could fix this situation easily by enacting legislation that clarified the definition of "official act" under bribery law--but they'll need public pressure to do so, which is why all of us should get on the phone right away and demand legislation that retroactively clarifies the definition of "official act" under the relevant law.
This Congress doesn't have a strong record of responding to ethics and corruption problems, but in a few cases, such as that involving the reversal of an ethics rule enabling Congressman Tom DeLay to stay in office as Majority Leader after being indicted last year, public pressure has proven capable of success.