As this column has observed over the years, when federal prosecutors focus their attention on high profile misconduct that is not an obvious violation of federal criminal law, they often cannot resist the attractions of broadly worded “catch-all” fraud statutes like the one prohibiting wire fraud.

From time to time, however, the Supreme Court has pushed back on efforts to further expand the boundaries of these statutes, leading to reversals of some well-publicized criminal convictions. The most recent example is the Supreme Court’s reversal of the “Bridgegate”-related convictions of Bill Baroni, the former Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority, and Bridget Anne Kelly, the former Deputy Chief of Staff to former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.