e with criminal intent. Congress defined the term "public official" broadly, and the courts have agreed. Public official is defined as an officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States. The official violates the statute when he or she offers or is requested to take action under the color of office outside the scope of his or her lawful duties, and the courts have also interpreted this section broadly and have held that the duties need not be set by statute. It has in fact been established that a public official may violate the act even if he or she does not have the authority to accomplish the requested act or does not perform the requested action.
Myriad instances of public officials violating these statutes can be found, along with violations of other ethical and statutory provisions of government regulations and laws in recent years, and indeed such instances can be found throughout U.S. history. In a study of government scandals and corruption in America beginning in 1702, Shelley Ross finds a number of repeated patterns in government corruption, with sex scandals offered as one level of corruption in government and bribery and other crimes involving money as another. It appears that few administrations have escaped a major scandal of one sort or another, though such major scandals would in any case only be the tip of the iceberg as far as the larger corruption that could be found in day-to-day business in some areas. Bribery and kickbacks only become a major scandal when they involve massive amounts of money at particularly high levels, but corruption includes bribery of the most minor customs officials as well. Ross notes that some scandals have been so corrosive that they have changed the course of history. Abraham Lincoln was elected for his honesty because of the corruption in the Buchanan administration that preceded him. Ross also notes,
Sometimes the influence can only be measur...