Steven P. Reed v. United States
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Can the federal government convict a politician for complying with a state's ambiguous campaign finance law?
QUESTION PRESENTED FOR REVIEW In Louisiana, the only body of law regulating state campaign finance expenditures is La. R.S. 1505.2 et seg., which allows for money to be spent on either (a) a political campaign or (b) the holding of a public office or party position. The holding of a public office is vaguely defined. Louisiana has reviewed Walter Reed’s expenditures and campaign finance reports for years, which included all campaign acts alleged in the federal indictment, and found no ethics violations. Can the federal government, citing a violation of the first prong of that same Louisiana law (while ignoring the second prong entirely), then convict Walter Reed (and thus his son, Petitioner Steven Reed) for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, wire fraud, and money laundering, when both Reeds acted consistently with a demonstrably reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous state law? Put another way, when the federal government leaves state campaign regulatory schemes to the individual states, and a politician complies with those local regulatory schemes, can the federal government then convict under a vague ' allegation of wire fraud that relies on a misapplied version of the state scheme? Is this an unwarranted expansion of federal power that provides no fair warning or notice to the defendant, triggering the concerns recently addressed in McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. ___, 186 S. Ct. 2355 (2016)? i