You see for a brief moment today, the court posted a copy of a decision that appears set to allow emergency room doctors in

Idaho to perform abortions in certain situations.

They quickly took it down and we're going to have more on that later.

But the first decision, the one they actually meant to actually put up, and they read, the one they released on purpose.

Well, how can I put this?

It effectively legalized blatant public corruption, again.

Chris Hayes is 100% correct in his interpretation of a recent Supreme

Court ruling that further weakens laws on government corruption and bribery.

And it involves a case with a former mayor of a small town in

Indiana who appeared to be engaging in a corruption scheme and was actually federally convicted of doing so.

Now before I get to those details and before we get to some insane video on this, Cenk, this is what the Supreme Court has been doing for decades, weakening corruption laws.

Yeah, they've done it in countless instances, not only just Citizens

United, before that, and I wrote about this injustice that's coming in Baladi and in Buckley v Vallejo.

So they just keep taking away more and more restrictions, so yeah, just go and spend the money, spend the money, billions of dollars, who cares, right?

And there's the legalized corruption, which is campaign donations.

And then there is this now, out and out bribery.

In the latest set of cases,

Governor McDonnell in Virginia, the Enron case, this case, the Supreme Court's saying, no, you could actually bribe them.

You could actually just give them money and gifts.

And depending on when you give it, we'll say that, no, it was before, no, it was after, no, it was during, nothing's ever corruption.

So this is brazen, this is just cash for a contract.

But the timing, they're so concerned about the timing, Anna.

So let's get to those details because I can't even believe that they passed down this ruling with a straight face.

But at the center of that case was a former mayor of Portage, Indiana.

His name is James Snyder.

And as I mentioned earlier, a federal jury actually found him guilty of breaking federal bribery laws.

Now Snyder was charged under a federal bribery law that makes it a crime for state and local officials to corruptly solicit or accept anything of value from any person intending to be influenced or rewarded for an official act.

So federal officials argue that the statute also applies to what's referred to as gratuities.

And that's when the money is exchanged after the political favor is done, okay?

That makes it so much better.

All right, so here's Chris Hayes explaining the context of Snyder v the United States.

Case was called Snyder v

United States and involves this man, James Snyder, the former Republican mayor of

Portage, Indiana.

And as the Chicago Tribune reports, it was Christmas time 2013 and

James Snyder was in trouble.

His mortgage business had tanked.

The IRS was after him for a significant tax debt.

And on top of that, he had holiday spending to account for.

So Snyder showed up unannounced to

Great Lakes Peterbilt, the local truck dealership he'd helped to win two lucrative city contracts.

I need money.

That's what I'm here for, the mayor told the owners.

Days later, the dealership cut

Snyder a check for $13,000 saying it was for consulting that was never fully performed.

Snyder was indicted on federal corruption charges back in 2016.

And after a lengthy back and forth and multiple trials, he was found guilty in 2021.

He argues the $13,000 was just a fee for his consulting work, though what that consulting work is a little unclear.

What's more, it couldn't possibly be a bribe.

This is important.

This is what he argued before the Supreme Court of the United States.

It couldn't be a bribe, you see, because he received the money after the contracts were allocated.

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Wow, okay, so I mean, you know what this does, right?

This further opens the floodgates for corruption.

Among elected lawmakers because who's to say that a lawmaker or a candidate running for office, you hit up a company that you want to get money from after the fact.

Hey, if I win, no bid contract for your company, and I'm expecting on some funds after the fact.

And that's not breaking any laws because now the Supreme Court has set a precedent indicating that if the bribe comes after, then it's okay, totally okay.

Totally okay.

So guys, they don't even have to have the conversation ahead of time.

Because once the Supreme Court makes this legal, which they now have, everybody's just going to start doing it.

And it'll become a de facto way of bribing our officials.

Right.

Because it's now literally legal.

So what will happen is, and remember why I tell you there's so many old politicians, because they get good return on investment on them, the donors give them money.

And they know these guys deliver, they always deliver for us, and they always screw over the voters, and that's why they keep giving them money.

So now, they'll start giving them money after they're out of office, or maybe right after they made the decision, it doesn't matter.

They'll just say, they're a consultant.

And so they'll give them in the beginning tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions of dollars, right?

And it'll become a thing like, once you after the vote, they go collect their money, right?

And so then the politicians know when you rule for X, Y, or Z, you're going to get paid.

So no one has to say a word, okay?

And by the way, there's already a definition of this that exists.

And that's why the Supreme Court ruled this way.

It's for all the ex-politicians and the ex-generals, that's super interesting.

Get to that in a second.

But also remember, guys, there's super rich donors that are paying for all the vacations, the homes, and all the gratuities for the Supreme Court justices.

I'm sure that Supreme Court justices like Justice Thomas,

Justice Alito, I mean, those two have been in the news for years for accepting lucrative gifts, luxurious gifts.

I mean, especially for Thomas, right?

So remember, all of the Supreme

Court justices who are conservative ruled in favor of tossing out this federal conviction for Snyder.

Only the three liberal justices voted against tossing out the conviction.

So what's amazing is that I actually believe the MAGA voters and the Republican voters that they hate corruption.

I do believe them for a number of reasons.

But their politicians and their Supreme Court justices are the worst of the worst.

So it's been the conservative

Supreme Court that in every single instance has said, bribery is awesome.

I mean, in this case, guys, you saw it with your own eyes there.

The guy comes in and says, give me the money.

What part of that is good?

I mean, it's like-

I need money.

I need money, give me the money.

My God.

I mean, it's like, at this point,

Cuba Gooding Jr.

can walk into a politician's office or walk into a business office if he was a politician and go, show me the money.

And the Supreme Court will be like,

I don't see it.

Nope, not a bribe.

Not a bribe.

What corruption?

So let's go to Chris Hayes explaining Brett Kavanaugh's reasoning here.

He wrote the majority opinion.

And then we're going to get to

Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote the dissenting opinion.

Let's go, let's watch.

Today, they threw out

Snyder's conviction.

Here's how Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it in his opinion.

The question in this case is whether the law also makes it a crime for state and local officials to accept gratuities, gratuities.

For example, gift cards, lunches, plaques, books, framed photos, or the like that may be given as a token appreciation after the official act.

And the answer is no.

Thomas loves gratuities.

Big fan of those gratuities.

He's such a funny guy.

Remember he used to say like, he's a camper guy that parks in the Walmart parking lot and sleeps there overnight.

Loves to live in RVs and

Walmart parking lots.

That's his favorite thing to do.

Totally.

Then we found out he's staying at the highest end resorts on the planet over and over and over again.

I mean, how could

Clarence Thomas and Alito say, these are unacceptable gratuities.

But when we take ten times as much, 20 times as much, in the same exact way, it's not illegal.

So since they themselves take endless bribes, they have to say bribery is legal.

Otherwise, they'd be criminal.

True, at least they're not hypocrites.

Yeah, so that's a good spit on it, right?

But guys, think about it.

It's over.

Like bribery is totally, utterly legal now.

Not just campaign donations, but directly into their pockets, because we have a criminal

Supreme Court.

Again, it reminds me of

Better Call Saul.

When you don't need a criminal

Supreme Court justice, but a criminal, you get it, right?

So these guys are the problem, and they do take bribes themselves.

So one of the positive things that

Biden managed to do in his otherwise embarrassing presidency was nominate a Supreme Court justice, and that's, of course,

Justice Katonji Brown-Jackson.

And she's a dissenting opinion here.

The two other liberal justices joined her in that dissenting opinion, and so you're about to hear how much she is disagreeing with this decision.

Let's watch.

Snyder's absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today's court could love.

Ignoring the plain text of section 666, which again expressly targets officials who corruptly solicit, accept, or agree to accept payments, intending to be influenced or rewarded, the court concludes that the statute does not criminalize gratuities at all.

She then goes on to say, the court's reasoning elevates non-existent federalism concerns over the plain text of this statute, and is a quintessential example of the tail wagging the dog.

The tail wagging the dog.

I mean, at this point, when it comes to issues involving corruption among our elected lawmakers, what more can you do than laugh at the Supreme Court?

The Supreme Court historically, as we talked about in the very beginning of the story, has consistently ruled in favor of corruption.

And it's hilarious to me because we talk about this wonderful democracy we live in, but what kind of democracy are we living in when corruption is literally baked into our system thanks to our Supreme Court?

Yeah, and so look, in my book, and you can get it at tyt.com slash justice, we'll put the link in the description box below.

I explain how the Chamber of

Commerce plotted to take over the Supreme Court.

They did, how the Supreme Court then legalized bribery so that the Chamber of Commerce could bribe all the politicians and swing the country in favor of corporate rule.

So that's all laid out in

Supreme Court cases in a memo where they explain what their plan was, and then they executed the plan.

And once the Supreme Court made the campaign contributions infinite and allowed for dark money and all those things, then the corruption set in massively.

So the reason they rule this way is because almost all the politicians, and by the way, almost all the generals, after they're done working in office, will then go get paid by the people they were supposed to regulate.

So like Eric Cantor used to be a major Republican leader, and he was an enormous advocate of deregulating the banks and giving them tax cuts.

And as soon as his term was over and he lost an election, he went to Wall Street and got a giant check, millions and millions of dollars from the banks, who he had just helped with massive legislation.

That's why the Supreme Court's like, there's 13,000 for this knucklehead.

That's nothing compared to what all of our friends are doing in

Washington nonstop.

And it's both Republicans and

Democrats.

The minute they're done, they go and get cash in all the bribes that they got from the industry.

You remember Dick Cheney?

He got a $34 million golden parachute from Halliburton, starts the war in Iraq.

And then all of a sudden,

Halliburton gets no bid contracts.

What part of that is free market?

That's the exact opposite of a free market, and he shovels billions of dollars for a job well done.

He's rich, they're rich, we all get screwed.

And finally, the generals.

Did you know that 80% of the four star generals, after they retire from the Defense Department, the Pentagon, the military, go and work for defense contractors and cash in for millions of dollars?

80%, you think they don't know that when they're shoveling taxpayer money in a completely unaccountable way to their future employers who are going to give them millions of dollars?

Just the tip, that's all it is, gratuities.

That's all, yep.

And by the way, when workers actually ask for higher minimum wage for people who normally get gratuities, they go, no, you guys are getting paid too much, and you're driving up inflation, we won't allow it.

And then they go get checks from the National Restaurant Association.

Washington is a joke, almost everyone there is completely and utterly corrupt.

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