{"id":181180,"date":"2016-09-10T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/09\/10\/corrupt-but-off-the-hook\/"},"modified":"2016-09-10T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T03:30:00","slug":"corrupt-but-off-the-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/09\/10\/corrupt-but-off-the-hook\/","title":{"rendered":"Corrupt, But Off the Hook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2016\/09\/08\/us-to-drop-corruption-charges-against-former-virginia-governor-wife.html\">will not be recharged for corruption<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">U.S. prosecutors on Thursday dropped corruption charges against former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife, bringing to a close a case that had tarnished the once-rising star of the Republican Party.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;After carefully considering the Supreme Court&#8217;s recent decision and the principles of federal prosecution, we have made the decision not to pursue the case further,&#8221; the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In June, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out McDonnell&#8217;s bribery convictions in a ruling that could make it tougher to prosecute politicians for corruption.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The eight justices, liberals and conservatives alike, overturned McDonnell&#8217;s 2014 conviction, saying that his conduct fell short of a &#8220;official act&#8221; in exchange for a bribe as required for conviction under federal bribery law. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This for nearly $200K of gifts.<\/p>\n<p>McDonnell sold his office, and sold his influence, but that is no longer a crime in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The old adage that the real scandal is not what is legal, but what is legal, applies here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell will not be recharged for corruption: U.S. prosecutors on Thursday dropped corruption charges against former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife, bringing to a close a case that had tarnished the once-rising star of the Republican Party.&#8220;After carefully considering the Supreme Court&#8217;s recent decision and the principles of federal &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[761,768,833],"class_list":["post-181180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-fail","tag-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}