Sarah Chayes - On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake

June 27, 2016

A momentous ruling was handed down that day.

Since morning they had gathered, carrying bullhorns, carrying signs cut out in the shape of Texas, signs with a uterus like the head of a longhorn steer, the photo of a fetus cradled aloft in two disembodied hands. Some chanted. Some wore black. Some covered their mouths with red duct tape, LIFE magic-markered across the gag.

They stood at the foot of the serried columns of the United States Supreme Court, which rises like a temple on Capitol Hill. They were there for the last announcements of the 2015 term. They were there for the abortion case: Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt.

The court was short, then, by one justice. The vote might be split. When the 53 decision came down, voiding a Texas law that required doctors who performed abortions to have hospital admitting privileges, a roar went up. Demonstrators fell into each others arms, ecstatic mouths wide. A woman in a pale blue sundress dubbed her disappointment a little setback, a bump. The cascade of media coverage poured forth for days.

It was important. But it is not the momentous ruling Im talking about.

There was another case decided that day: McDonnell v. United States. Thats the one I mean. It concerned the conduct of those who hold public office. It went to the heart of how a democracy should be run. But it got scant attention.

Petitioner Bob McDonnell was governor of the state of Virginia when he did what he did. During his race for that office in 2009, the CEO of a Virginia tobacco company who was attempting conversion to pharmaceuticals offered him rides to campaign stops on a private jet. The CEOs name was Jonnie Williams. Williamss company had formulated a tobacco-based dietary supplement that was supposed to have anti-inflammatory properties and to help athletes with sore joints or injuries on the mend. Pamphlets and online comments swore that the tablets improved conditions from Alzheimers to thyroid disease to traumatic brain injury, even rashes. But the pills had never undergone independent clinical trials.

Thats what Williams wanted from the victorious McDonnell. Aboard the private jet again in the fall of 2010, Williams asked the new governor to set him up with whatever state official he needed to talk to to get the University of Virginia to run the trials. McDonnell directed his secretary of health and human resources to meet with his benefactor. The official, according to the Supreme Court opinion, was skeptical of the science.

Williams kept trying. He took Mrs. McDonnell on a shopping trip and bought her $20,000 worth of designer clothing. He listened sympathetically to her worries about rental properties the McDonnells owned in Virginia Beach, the mounting cost of their daughters coming wedding. The Governor says its okay for me to help you, Williams testified she assured him. But I need you to help mewith this financial situation. He came across with a total of $65,000 in loans and cash gifts. He invited the gubernatorial couple to his multimillion-dollar vacation home; had his Ferrari delivered there for the McDonnells use; paid for the governors golf outings; bought a Rolex just like his own for Mrs. McDonnell to box up for her husband for Christmas.

McDonnell tried too. Sometimes his phone calls to subordinates came just minutes after a conversation with Williams. McDonnell directed his health and human resources secretary to send staff to listen to Williamss pitch. He threw a luncheon party touting Williamss product, at which the CEO handed out $25,000 checks to Virginia public university researchers to cover the cost of writing grant proposals. In the midst of negotiating another $50,000 Williams loan, McDonnell called around to find out why no such application had materialized. He hosted a health-care industry reception so Williams could do more lobbying. He popped Williamss pills at a meeting with two state officials, urging them to list the product with medications covered by the state employees insurance plan.

Williamss gifts and loans continued, totaling in the end more than $175,000 plus vacations and such luxuries.

On September 4, 2014, a jury in federal district court convicted McDonnell on four counts of honest services wire fraud, and conspiracy (18 USC 1343 and 1349), and seven counts of extorting property under color of official right, and conspiracy (18 USC 1951), all of which carry a maximum twenty-year prison term. McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prisonwell below the prosecutions request, which was already at the low end of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines recommended range. He appealed. On July 10, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled he had been duly convicted by a jury of his fellow Virginians. It affirmed the decision against him. All three judges on the panel joined the opinion.

McDonnell appealed to the Supreme Court. The ruling came down on June 27, 2016.

That evening I stood in my narrow kitchen with the radio on. Its how I love to end the day: a beer and slab bacon and a mess of vegetables in a skillet, an ear to the news. Just four days back, the people of the United Kingdom had reversed a half century of European history, voting to Brexit the Union. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had widened her lead over Donald Trump in a campaign that was careening from one dumbfounding episode to the next. And there was the end of the Supreme Courts 2015 term. Through the din, thats what I was listening for.