[aruanan]

There doesn’t seem to be anything terribly unethical about the White House offer of an unpaid advisory position to Joe Sestak if he would bow out of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, in which he later defeated Senator Arlen Specter.

Also, he could not have continued serving in the House of Representatives if he took such an unpaid advisory position, so their story is false from the beginning. Besides, the offer of anything, paid or unpaid, in return for his dropping out is illegal under the statute.

[freespirited]

I agree it’s illegal, I just suspect that a prosecutor is far less likely to proceed if the offer didn’t involve money. Similarly, if it the messenger is a former president (ha!) no prosecutor is going to bring charges no matter how illegal the act.

So IMO the story is simply constructed to avoid prosecution, not make sense. It’s as if the WH lawyer were a law student given a newpaper article and told to make up a story that would best avoid prosecution rather than find out what the truth is.

On that task he would probably get a pretty good grade.