tazzygirl
Posts: 37833
Joined: 10/12/2007
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Nope, doesnt make it right on any level. I agree. However, as so many have pointed out, intent is the question.
Even former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, appointed by President George W. Bush, said on Fox News that it was questionable if there was any crime and that a prosecution "really is a stretch." Richard Painter, who was Mr. Bush's chief ethics lawyer, has written that it hardly amounts to an illegal bribe. And Mr. Sestak himself said he did not think it was a crime.
"If I ever thought anything had been wrong about this, I would have reported it," Mr. Sestak said. He added, "I understand Washington, D.C., is often about political deals."
Indeed, the White House compiled a list of other times administrations considered appointments to affect elections. Among the examples it found, citing news reports: Mr. Bush's team looking for a position for Representative Benjamin A. Gilman of New York in 2002 to avoid him challenging another Republican incumbent; Mr. Clinton nominating Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts to be ambassador to Mexico in 1997, making it easier for a Democrat to win his office; and Ronald Reagan's advisers dangling an ambassadorship in 1981 if Senator S. I. Hayakawa dropped out of a California Republican primary.
At the same time, it can depend on just how subtle or explicit the offers are. Political deals offered in a particularly raw way have gotten officeholders in trouble before. In 2004, the House ethics committee admonished Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, then the Republican House majority leader, for offering to support the Congressional campaign of a fellow lawmaker's son in exchange for a critical vote on a Medicare bill. And former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, a Democrat, is scheduled to go on trial this week on allegations of trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat for a high-paying job.
So what about this case? Federal law makes it a crime for anyone "who directly or indirectly promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or any other benefit" to someone else "as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office."
It is also illegal for a government official to use "his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate" for offices including senator.
William Burck, a white-collar defense attorney at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and former deputy White House counsel under Mr. Bush, said it did not matter that the position being discussed with Mr. Sestak was an unpaid advisory board membership.
"The legal question comes down to the White House's intent and Sestak's understanding of what the White House wanted from him in return," Mr. Burck said. "If the position was offered as a quid pro quo to induce Sestak not to run in the Democratic primary, then it could be viewed essentially as a bribe. If the job was offered to him without conditions, then it would be harder to prove any law was violated."
Joseph Gibson, former chief counsel to House Judiciary Committee Republicans and author of "Persuading Congress," dismissed the defense that everyone does it. "Most parents do not accept that excuse from their children, and the public should not accept it here," he said. "A line may have been crossed. But we do not know all the facts right now, and we cannot fairly judge the situation until we do."
David B. Rivkin Jr., who served in the White House and the Justice Department under Republican presidents, agreed that more investigation was needed.
"Indeed, to say now that the law was broken is a stretch," he said. "We don't know yet. It all depends on what was said to him, what he said in response." The major question, Mr. Rivkin added, is whether the discussion "amounted to a promise or was it something much more ephemeral?"
The language of the law, though, is so broad it would seem to cover any number of widely accepted political activities. "This strikes me as marginally seedy but not a crime and not something worthy of spending resources to investigate," said Michael R. Bromwich, a former Iran-Contra prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general. "For better or worse, our political system is characterized by deals and exchanges of favors."
Jack Quinn, who was White House counsel for Mr. Clinton, said "there was no suggestion of a quid pro quo" as required by law. "Republican complaints about this echo the years of numerous absurd G.O.P. investigations in the '90s, the upshot of which was not a single conclusion of wrongdoing but the waste of untold millions of taxpayer dollars."
Steven F. Reich, a co-chairman of the white-collar practice at Manatt Phelps & Phillips and a former White House lawyer under Mr. Clinton, said there was no legal case. "We don't throw common sense out the window when we analyze the scope of a law," he said. "That is especially true here, where a literal application of the law would produce absurd results."
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10150/1061996-84.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml#ixzz0pSeXtE8l
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RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.
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RE: The Sestak Allegation - 
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