United States v. Steven Terry

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

“If you can’t eat [lobbyists’] food, drink their booze, ... take their money and then vote against them, you’ve got no business being [in politics],” said Jesse Unruh, a one-time Speaker of the California General Assembly, in the 1960s. Bill Boyarsky, Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics 112 (2007). That is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it comes courtesy of the federal anti-corruption statutes, one of which prohibits an official from accepting things of value “in return for” official acts. 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(2). A jury found…