D.C. Demand Spikes for Lawyers with Corruption Specialty

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STEVE INSKEEP, host:

This asbestos battle comes at a time when lobbyists and lawmakers face pressure to reform. Congressional Republicans just elected a new leader and adopted new rules. And those changes happened in part because of the investigation of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff. That investigation continues. And that explains why one kind of legal specialist is suddenly in demand all over Washington, D.C.

NPR's Peter Overby reports on the seller's market for lawyers who know federal corruption laws.

PETER OVERBY reporting:

It's so much of a seller's market, in fact, that two weeks of reporting turned up virtually no lawyers in Washington who would discuss this case on the record. Some of them already have clients and the rest of those contacted said they don't want to upset any potential clients.

Mr. RANDALL ELIASON (Former Prosecutor, D.C.): Boom times for white-collar defense attorneys.

OVERBY: Meet Randall Eliason, one of the few D.C. lawyers who will talk. In the 1990s, he was a federal prosecutor on the case against former Democratic Congressman Dan Rostenkowski. Now he teaches and writes. Eliason, along with all of those off-the-record lawyers says the legal framework of the Abramoff case is already set. It rests primarily on three laws.

Mr. ELIASON: Sort of the normal universe of charges, if you're talking about a corruption case involving a federal official. Bribery and gratuities are the main corruption statutes and then fair and honest services, mail fraud or wire fraud is also a very popular theory.

OVERBY: In a bribery case, a public official agrees to perform an official act in exchange for something of value. The reward doesn't have to go to the official, it could go to a campaign committee or anywhere else it's agreed on. The prison sentence can run up to 15 years. A second separate crime is accepting an illegal gratuity, that's just two years in prison. The gift has to be linked to a specific official act, not just good will. But unlike bribery, no explicit agreement is needed. Then there's mail or wire fraud.

Prosecutors can charge a public official with using mail, telephone, e-mail or other devices to defraud constituents of the officials' honest services; in other words, selling a public office to a private buyer. That could bring a sentence of up to 20 years. The attorney stressed that none of these charges is what you'd call a slam-dunk in court. For starters, prosecutors have to get over a hurdle set by the constitution. The speech or debate clause says members of Congress cannot be prosecuted for legislative activities.

Mr. ELIASON: He can't always show, sort of, the end game; what did the representative do to, you know, introduce this bill? He made this speech in committee, things like that.

OVERBY: But, as Randall Eliason points out, the speech or debate clause does not give lawmakers complete immunity or anything like it.

Mr. ELIASON: For a bribery case the crime is the agreement. It's actually irrelevant to guilt or innocence whether they ever carried out their end of the bargain.

OVERBY: A lawmaker can also be charged for non-legislative acts-- things that don't involve the making of a law; say, signing a letter to a Cabinet secretary to support a lobbyist's client. But here's another catch in prosecuting bribery. Nobody involved is a victim, so none of the parties has a natural incentive to help the prosecution. Again, Randall Eliason.

Mr. ELIASON: That's why Abramoff's plea is such a big development in this case because if there were corrupted deals that took place, now they have one party to the deal who's going to testify about it.

OVERBY: Even when someone turns and cooperates with the prosecutors, a corruption case can come down to one tainted witness against another, so the strongest cases have tended to be stings where the crime is captured on tape. The model for this was Abscam in 1979. FBI agents videotaped seven lawmakers taking payoffs from a man masquerading as an Arab sheik. With a surveillance camera rolling, Democratic Congressman Michael Ozzie Myers got an envelope with $50,000 in it. He uttered a tough-guy cliché about what talks and what walks.

Mr. MICHAEL MYERS (Former Representative from Pennsylvania): I'm gonna tell you somethin' real simple and short; your money talks in this business and bull(bleep) walks. It works the same way down in Washington.

OVERBY: Myers went to prison. Philip Heymann was the Assistant Attorney General who oversaw Abscam. Now he teaches at Harvard Law School.

Mr. PHILIP HEYMANN (James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Harvard Law School): Nobody was coaxed to take the cash. Everybody either voluntarily took it or walked away from it.

OVERBY: Heymann says the courtroom testimony in the Abramoff case could be a wash--Abramoff's word versus the defendant's--if only Abramoff hadn't left such a rich trail of e-mail.

Mr. HEYMANN: Presumably they will ask Abramoff to testify to the fact that he had already had the following discussions with the Congressman and that would do it if the jury believes Abramoff and they'll use, I assume, the e-mail to bolster Abramoff's testimony.

OVERBY: And that's why some people named in those e-mails might be shopping around for a defense attorney. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

The Abramoff scandal prompted lawmakers and good government groups to propose a flurry of reforms and you can compare their plans by going to our website, NPR.org.

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