Former Los Angeles city councilman Jose Huizar is currently on trial for engaging in widespread and routine corruption with developers who wanted to build stuff in LA. Huizar doesn't even deny most of it:
In a recent court filing, Huizar’s lawyers argued that many of the steps he is accused of taking to help those businessmen, such as setting up meetings and recommending consultants, were too informal to qualify as the type of “official acts” that meet the definition of bribery under federal law.
....The filing is Huizar’s most detailed defense yet against allegations that he ran a racketeering enterprise out of City Hall to enrich himself and his allies by shaking down developers. If U.S. District Judge John F. Walter grants his request to sharply scale back the 41-count indictment, it would effectively gut the prosecution’s case, leaving such charges as tax evasion and lying to the FBI.
Thanks, Supreme Court! By defining down "corruption," guys like Huizar can make the venerable "but everyone does it" defense and have a chance of making it stick. Nice work.
For a conservative it's only illegal if you get caught, then you've failed conservatism.
He was just being helpful--"here, use my guy, he'll make sure everything works out ok"
Like every other bad thing, "Defining deviancy down" is only acceptable if you are a Republican.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure a guy like Jose Huizar doesn't qualify for any SCOTUS loopholes to corrupt away while in office. Too ethnic sounding to pass judicial muster. John Howard or Joseph Hall might do better at getting the free pass.
To be fair, the conservatives on the Supreme Court didn't know, when they gutted this and other white collar criminal statutes in the last 15 years to get rich, powerful white guys off the hook, that lower courts would have to then apply it to Latinos, African-Americans, etc. An honest mistake, since they probably assumed that only white men could have positions powerful enough where corruption and other white collar criminal laws could apply.
Maybe not, though.
John Roberts has yet to thoroughly sanction Gonzalo Curiel for his discriminatory response to El Jefe Maximo in the Trump U. case.