Quinn Emanuel Partner Daniel Koffmann Publishes Article on McDonnell Decision in Law360

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in McDonnell v. United States, lower courts have struggled to define what constitutes an “official act” (or “quo” in a quid pro quo) for purposes of bribery prosecutions. Two recent appellate decisions, U.S. v. Weiss and U.S. v. Paitsel, exemplify the challenges lower courts have faced. In this article, Quinn Emanuel partner Daniel Koffmann and associate Michael Bloom analyze the approaches the Seventh and D.C. Circuits took in dealing with McDonnell and what federal criminal practitioners can learn from these decisions—which may be that McDonnell’s painstaking official-acts analysis becomes a relic of bygone bribery prosecutions.

Read the analysis here.

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