Honest Services Fraud A Fraud?

MSM wailed how a UNANIMOUS Sup Crt threw out Cuomo aides’ bribery convictions based on vague “honest services” statutes, delivering a blow to DOJ’s efforts to root out public corruption.” If only DOJ knew the law?

You’d think they would've conceded by now the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that some federal and state “honest services” laws either come too close to skirting if not plainly violating the US Constitution. One of the defense lawyers told NBC News, his client’s win echoed similar decisions in recent years in which the court stressed that “the government cannot use vague fraud statutes to advance novel & sweeping theories in prosecutions of political actors.”

Not that proving fraud, bribery, embezzlement or extortion by public poltroons (including corrupt pols & JUDGES) is an easy lift for prosecutors honestly trying to protect the public from their chicanery. Or that the Cuomo defendants weren’t guilty of something. But, recall how the “honest services” theory was largely codified by Congress in 1988, but repeatedly “narrowed” by the High Court, starting with its 2010 ruling in Skilling v US. That seminal case held the honest services law in that case could only pass constitutional muster only to the extent it covered “fraudulent schemes to deprive another of honest services through [demonstrably, specific] bribes or kickbacks”. The inconvenient truth is that it is the very vagueness inherent in most of these “honest services” statutes that the Justices have always been wary of. The fear? It can too easily lead to political aka selective prosecutions & deny defendants the specificity in criminal charges that’s required by the Constitution. Where have we seen this prosecutorial abuse in recent years?

Davd Soul