Key Takeaways In Ex-NY Lt. Gov.'s Tossed Bribery Charges
| Jurisdiction | United States,Federal |
| Law Firm | Arnold & Porter |
| Subject Matter | Criminal Law, White Collar Crime, Anti-Corruption & Fraud |
| Author | Mr Murad Hussain, Michael Kim Krouse and Melissa E. Romanovich |
| Published date | 05 April 2023 |
On Dec. 5, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed three counts of a five-count indictment against former New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, holding that the prosecution's corruption charges failed to satisfy the First Amendment's heightened standard for an alleged quid pro quo involving political contributions.1
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken's decision in U.S. v. Migdol was the latest in a recent string of federal rulings that have narrowed the enforcement options available to public corruption prosecutors ' particularly when they pursue state-level officials.
A Closer Look at the Case
Benjamin resigned from his position in April 2022, immediately after federal prosecutors charged him with diverting $50,000 in state funds to a charitable organization in return for bribes in the form of campaign contributions.
The indictment also accused Benjamin of lying to the New York City Campaign Finance Board about his comptroller campaign and falsifying his executive appointment questionnaire in order to conceal the alleged bribery.
The indictment included three bribery-related corruption charges ' federal programs bribery, honest services wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit those two offenses ' and two charges of obstructing an investigation by falsifying records.
Benjamin moved to dismiss the entire indictment.
In dismissing the bribery-related charges, Judge Oetken first reviewed U.S. Supreme Court case law on quid pro quo agreements in the context of campaign contributions.
As the Supreme Court explained in 1991 in the Hobbs Act extortion case of McCormick v. U.S., an unlawful quid pro quo between a public official and a private citizen cannot be inferred simply from the fact that an official received a contribution and then took action favorable to the donor.2
In our privately financed system of elections, political contributions are expressive and associative acts protected by the First Amendment, and people will typically donate to officials whom they expect to act favorably to their interests.
Thus, to avoid criminalizing commonplace political activity, corruption prosecutions involving political contributions must prove more than a chronological connection between contributions and official conduct.3
As such, the McCormick court explained, a political contribution only violates federal law if a contribution is made "in return for an explicit promise or undertaking by the official to perform or not to perform an...
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