Addressing the notion of corruption | Guest Opinion

“Corrupt” is perhaps one of the President’s favorite words. The leader of the Republican party, for whom it seems every accusation is a confession, uses the word to describe others constantly. President Biden. The media. Secretary Clinton. The entire country.

Corruption (bribery) is and ought to be of great concern to the American people. The authors of the Federalist Papers, founders who advocated for adoption of the Constitution rather than the failed Articles of Confederation, worried greatly about the possibility of dishonest or illegal behavior by the powerful. As Alexander Hamilton wrote:

“Nothing was more to be desired, than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their aproaches [sic] from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” Federalist No. 68

“One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.” Federalist No. 22

So the Constitution was written with an eye toward prohibiting corruption. The Foreign Emoluments Clause specifically prohibits any “Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under” the United States from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Congress has made several further laws targeting corruption, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the federal anti-bribery law, and laws requiring government employees to give the public their honest services.

However, our country has a pattern of passing laws, regulations, and even Constitutional provisions that are then whittled away over time. “No law” in the First Amendment’s protection of free speech eventually means “no law but….” with a long list of exceptions. Laws requiring equal access to the ballot eventually allow all kinds of underhanded actions to undermine voting rights. And laws prohibiting corruption have diminished dramatically over the last decade.

In 2016, the Supreme Court began weakening anti-corruption laws by overturning ex-governor Bob McDonnell’s conviction for taking bribes for pushing state universities to conduct studies showing that certain uses of tobacco were benign; the court said he was not official in his capacity as governor. The Court imposed further limitations in the 2020 “Bridgegate” case, overturning convictions of Governor Chris Christie’s aides who manipulated traffic into a New Jersey town for political reasons. Similarly, in 2023, it overturned the conviction of a former aide to the New York governor who was working for his re-election campaign and using his influence in exchange for bribes. In 2021, it dismissed cases alleging Emoluments Clause violations during Trump’s first term because he was no longer in office. Last year, it ruled that the President, once understood to be subject to the law, cannot be convicted for his official acts as President.

We cannot lay all blame at the feet of the court. The executive branch has also failed us. Prosecutions for corruption have been dropping for years. The president “paused” enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and effectively abolished the Justice Department’s task forces on political and foreign corruption. He also pardons corrupt politicians. A lot.

And Congress? The last anti-corruption law was adopted over 40 years ago.

Given the cycle we seem to go through with our laws (egregious violations, dramatic reforms, whittling the reforms into oblivion, rinse, repeat), it is time for new reforms. Our current laws, including the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, are not up to the tasks they were written for. Our current legislatures, executives, and courts will not restore them on their own, instead, they will fire the investigators and hobble the auditors. It is up to the people to force these changes. Our elected officials must serve us, not kings who give them $400,000,000 jets or multi-billion-dollar crypto “investments.”

Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City and write at  www.ourlibertiesweprize.com. And biannual time changes must be abolished.