The U.S. Department of Justice’s public integrity section was once something of a showcase operation. Its purpose was to go after corrupt politicians and judges and to help ensure the integrity of the electoral process. It stood for the highest ethical standards in government, and it was supposed to put teeth in those standards.
Today, however, the public integrity section is reeling. Federal judges in Washington, D.C., and Maine have questioned the section’s ethics and motivations. A special prosecutor is investigating whether cases brought by the section were politically motivated. The section is stonewalling a House Judiciary Committee investigation into its handling of a series of politically charged cases. And U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia recently ridiculed “honest services fraud”-the legal theory that has emerged as the hallmark of public integrity corruption prosecutions.
