Damn this traffic jam,
How I hate to be late,
It hurts my motor to go so slow...
- "Traffic Jam"
James Taylor
Slightly less than four months ago, when the attorneys representing Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni argued their clients' case for overturning their criminal convictions before the nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, certain of the Justices expressed skepticism that what Kelly and Baroni had done (created some "traffic problems in Fort Lee") was, in fact, criminal. Here in the State of Concrete Gardens, trading sharp elbows is par for the course in politics, after all. But did the fact that it was political payback of the highest order make it a federal crime?
Yesterday morning, the Supremes answered that question, and did so in one, unanimous voice. Writing for the Court, Justice Kagan pointed out that not everything shady, mean-spirited thing done in the political arena rises to the level of criminal behavior, including the things that Ms. Kelly and Mr. Baroni did:
The question
presented is whether the defendants committed property fraud. The evidence the
jury heard no doubt shows wrongdoing—deception, corruption, abuse of power. But
the federal fraud statutes at issue do not criminalize all such conduct. Under
settled precedent, the officials could violate those laws only if an object of
their dishonesty was to obtain the Port Authority’s money or property. The
Government contends it was, because the officials sought both to “commandeer”
the Bridge’s access lanes and to divert the wage labor of the Port Authority
employees used in that effort. Tr. of Oral Arg. 58. We disagree. The
realignment of the toll lanes was an exercise of regulatory power—something
this Court has already held fails to meet the statutes’ property requirement.
And the employees’ labor was just the incidental cost of that regulation,
rather than itself an object of the officials’ scheme. We therefore reverse the
convictions.
Moral of this story: In Jersey, anything's legal as long as you don't get caught...
...and sometimes, under the right marriage of facts and federal law, even if you do.
-AK
On a day when the Russian General Flynn could get a hall pass from the DOJ for a crime he had already admitted to (and consequently found guilty of), this seems to have earned no more than a shrug from the MSM. Whatever happened to the USA anyway?
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