The Feds didn't offer these crooks money, the crooks DEMANDED specified sums from the Feds.
Exactly! The clarification bears saying again: The crooked politicians (most of them democrat, natch) requested payment. Nothing was offered by the undercover Fed's. In fact, several senators were quoted in the Tennessean as having met with E-Cycle (or whatever the phoney company was called) and never been offered cash by them to sway their influence.