Menendez Followed the Supreme Court's Bribery Playbook

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

51% : The seminal case involved former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, who was convicted on bribery charges in 2014 after he and his wife accepted $175,000 in "loans, gifts, and other benefits" from a businessman who received their help persuading state universities to perform research studies on a nutritional supplement that his company was developing.
51% : The government alleges, for instance, that Menendez "provided sensitive U.S. Government information" to the Egyptian government, apparently by giving them "non-public information" in the form of a text message about staffing at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, by disclosing "non-public information" about the status of U.S. aid to Egypt, and by ghost-writing a letter on behalf of Egyptian officials asking the U.S. Senate to release a hold on aid to Egypt.
44% : The first is whether the government can establish that the alleged actions at issue on the part of Menendez were actually "official acts" within the meaning of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the law.
39% : The indictment is strongest when it describes Menendez's alleged efforts to intervene in state and federal criminal investigations on behalf of his and his wife's co-defendants, but the particulars are curious in places.
35% : That never happened for reasons that are as unfortunate as they are obvious -- namely, that members of Congress are among the principal beneficiaries when courts narrowly define public corruption.

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