Posted on 11/29/2022 11:33:48 PM PST by blueplum
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday questioned whether an ex-aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was lawfully convicted on a bribery charge as it considered two cases that could place new limits on federal prosecutors in public corruption cases.
The first case centered on whether Joseph Percoco’s conduct in taking a $35,000 payment from a real estate developer when managing Cuomo’s re-election campaign in 2014 is covered by a federal law that requires that “honest services” be provided to the public. Percoco says that because he was not working for the government at the time, he had no duty to provide honest services.
The second case involves Louis Ciminelli, a real estate developer based in Buffalo, who was convicted of wire fraud for seeking to rig the bidding process for redevelopment contracts...
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
This will be the case until they decide to prosecute Donald Trump on some ridiculous charge.
The old “no duty to provide honest services” defense.
The prosecutors seem to have gone way out of bounds on these cases to get convictions. The fact that Ketanji Brown Jackson and Gorsuch were both hammering the prosecution arguments makes me think the Court is going to rule against the gov’t on this.
Legitimizing NY Corruption. Oh, that’s wonderful. 🙄
It’s a bogus charge that is only brought by prosecutors when they can’t find any real crime in a case — like those wealthy Hollywood people who were charged with faking credentials for their children in the recent college admissions “scandal.”
Honest services fraud is really designed for narrow cases where a public official working in a volunteer capacity is engaged in criminal activity but can’t be charged for defrauding the public under traditional fraud statutes because the public cannot document a tangible financial loss.
Where does the Constitution give Congress the right to pass laws involving local govt corruption ?
yup, oldest trick in the book...
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