408
Opinion of the Court
Thus, when the violation is linked to a particular "official act," it is possible to eliminate the absurdities through the definition of that term. When, however, no particular "official act" need be identified, and the giving of gifts by reason of the recipient's mere tenure in office constitutes a violation, nothing but the Government's discretion prevents the foregoing examples from being prosecuted.
The Government insists that its interpretation is the only one that gives effect to all of the statutory language. Specifically, it claims that the "official position" construction is the only way to give effect to § 201(c)(1)(A)'s forward-looking prohibition on gratuities to persons who have been selected to be public officials but have not yet taken office. Because, it contends, such individuals would not know of specific matters that would come before them, the only way to give this provision effect is to interpret "official act" to mean "official position." But we have no trouble envisioning the application of § 201(c)(1)(A) to a selectee for federal office under the more narrow interpretation. If, for instance, a large computer company that has planned to merge with another large computer company makes a gift to a person who has been chosen to be Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and who has publicly indicated his approval of the merger, it would be quite possible for a jury to find that the gift was made "for or because of" the person's anticipated decision, once he is in office, not to challenge the merger. The uncertainty of future action seems to us, in principle, no more an impediment to prosecution of a selectee with respect to some future official act than it is to prosecution of an officeholder with respect to some future official act.
Our refusal to read § 201(c)(1)(A) as a prohibition of gifts given by reason of the donee's office is supported by the fact that when Congress has wanted to adopt such a broadly prophylactic criminal prohibition upon gift giving, it has done so in a more precise and more administrable fashion. For
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