[00:00:00] Speaker 02:
So United States versus Booty 22-2079.

[00:00:03] Speaker 02:
Please counsel for the opponent.

[00:00:05] Speaker 02:
Yes, please approach and proceed.

[00:00:10] Speaker 01:
May it please the Court.

[00:00:14] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, there are several issues raised in our briefing in this matter, but what I want to focus on, what I want to focus the Court on today is the due process issues and the perfect storm that was created by the District Court below.

[00:00:29] Speaker 01:
with respect to the defense's presentation of its case.

[00:00:33] Speaker 01:
When we look at the due process issues in this case, I would like to focus the Court on that the government bears the burden to negate any reasonable interpretation of a regulatory regime

[00:00:51] Speaker 01:
that would make defendant's conduct not criminal and the gate intent.

[00:00:55] Speaker 03:
Well, are we focused right now on substantive due process?

[00:01:01] Speaker 01:
Well, there's a combination of substantive and procedural due process issues in this case, Your Honor.

[00:01:05] Speaker 03:
Well, let's take them one at a time.

[00:01:06] Speaker 03:
Let's start with substantive.

[00:01:09] Speaker 01:
As far as the substance goes, I would point the court to two issues.

[00:01:15] Speaker 03:
Well, I'm going to ask you what I want you to point me to.

[00:01:17] Speaker 01:
Oh, I'm sorry, Your Honor.

[00:01:17] Speaker 01:
Go ahead.

[00:01:18] Speaker 03:
If we're arguing substantive due process, I want to know

[00:01:22] Speaker 03:
Where, in your opening brief, you told us what fundamental liberty interest we're talking about?

[00:01:30] Speaker 03:
Or, alternatively, what conduct of the government do you assert shocks the consciousness?

[00:01:37] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, the due process arguments find their expression in

[00:01:50] Speaker 01:
what we raised about the court's treatment of the motion to dismiss.

[00:01:56] Speaker 03:
And so in our report... Well, a vague objection to how the court treated a motion to dismiss is not a substantive due process argument.

[00:02:06] Speaker 03:
Well, Your Honor... Substantive due process has particular, I guess I'll call them elements, and

[00:02:13] Speaker 03:
I don't see anywhere in your briefing where you've even explained how what you're arguing fits in the framework of the substantive due process.

[00:02:25] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, the substantive due process takes, if we've cited the Simmons case,

[00:02:31] Speaker 01:
And we've cited the Medeiros case.

[00:02:34] Speaker 01:
In Medeiros, this court made clear that fair warning of what was criminal in the context of... Now you're arguing ex post facto?

[00:02:44] Speaker 01:
Well, there's a combination of substantive due process and ex post facto with respect to Medeiros.

[00:02:51] Speaker 01:
Because we have the government's reinterpretation after the fact of what was criminal in the context of congressional liaison activities or lobbying.

[00:03:02] Speaker 03:
And we also have... Well, on ex post facto, I don't see even a site to the ex post facto clause

[00:03:15] Speaker 03:
I mean, I found it very difficult to follow your constitutional arguments because they really weren't tethered to any expression of what it takes to make such an argument.

[00:03:31] Speaker 03:
And I'm inclined to think you forfeited your expertise.

[00:03:39] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, I think we pointed out in our reply brief where we raised those issues with the court.

[00:03:49] Speaker 01:
In the motion to dismiss, those arguments were certainly raised in terms of the application or the reinterpretation of the lobbying statute and how the government basically has charged the lobbying statute as fraud.

[00:04:04] Speaker 03:
Okay, so if we get over my concerns with adequate briefing and we go to the merits, the biggest problem that I see is that

[00:04:14] Speaker 03:
There's no charge for violating the lobbying statute.

[00:04:17] Speaker 03:
That's not the charge.

[00:04:20] Speaker 03:
That's not what this case is about.

[00:04:24] Speaker 03:
It's about fraudulent payment requests.

[00:04:27] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, but there's no proof that Mr. Booty himself was involved in any of the fraudulent payment requests at all.

[00:04:34] Speaker 03:
That's a different argument than ex post facto.

[00:04:38] Speaker 01:
So what the government's argument is in its opposition brief

[00:04:44] Speaker 01:
is that if you take even absent the proof that Mr. Booty was involved in allocating the money or reviewing or formulating the invoices or reviewing them or even recommending their payment to the government, what they say is that under any interpretation of the law here, that invoices would have to be fraudulent because

[00:05:14] Speaker 01:
They were asking for Mr. Lowe to be paid as a lobbyist.

[00:05:19] Speaker 01:
Now, in terms of whether this is an Antideficiency Act violation,

[00:05:24] Speaker 01:
or whether this is a complex scheme or whether this has several issues with respect to how is that interpreted?

[00:05:33] Speaker 01:
It is the government's burden up front which was shifted to the defense.

[00:05:36] Speaker 02:
They were asking Mr. Lowe to be paid for something he didn't do.

[00:05:41] Speaker 02:
He could have done anything.

[00:05:43] Speaker 02:
It just so happened that he did lobbying.

[00:05:45] Speaker 02:
But they were asking, these invoices were being submitted under the pretense that he was doing something he wasn't doing.

[00:05:52] Speaker 01:
Yeah, but Your Honor, in Mr. Diaz's testimony, he testified, and there's no proof otherwise, that Mr. Booty knew that the invoices were inflated, or that they were mapped, or any of that aspect.

[00:06:07] Speaker 01:
There's no evidence in the record that Mr. Booty knew what money was allocated to these contracts.

[00:06:14] Speaker 02:
Was there evidence in the record that he knew that they were going to be paying Mr. Love?

[00:06:20] Speaker 01:
Well, there was evidence of that.

[00:06:22] Speaker 02:
And he knew what Mr. Lowe was supposed to be doing to get paid, right?

[00:06:27] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor, the lobbying aspect.

[00:06:29] Speaker 01:
He got $8.7 million.

[00:06:30] Speaker 02:
He knew that Mr. Lowe was going to be lobbying.

[00:06:34] Speaker 02:
He knew that these companies were paying Mr. Lowe.

[00:06:37] Speaker 02:
And presumably, he knew that the companies could not have been paying him to lobby.

[00:06:42] Speaker 02:
So what difference does it make what the lobbying statute is?

[00:06:47] Speaker 02:
Let's take another scenario.

[00:06:49] Speaker 02:
You had a guy who was building aircraft assembly engines for the company.

[00:06:55] Speaker 02:
Mr. Booty says okay, well we want these engines, you know and but we can't afford to get them right now So you two companies I want you to pay him for something

[00:07:06] Speaker 02:
Something else.

[00:07:08] Speaker 02:
I know that he's giving us aircraft engines.

[00:07:10] Speaker 02:
I want you to pay him for something else.

[00:07:13] Speaker 02:
It doesn't matter whether it's lobbying.

[00:07:14] Speaker 02:
You've got a false claim that is made involving the government, to defraud the government.

[00:07:21] Speaker 02:
What difference does it make?

[00:07:22] Speaker 01:
Well, that does make a big difference, Your Honor.

[00:07:24] Speaker 01:
The context of whether it's illegal lobbying, you know, it's not, lobbying per se is not, is not, there's no fair notice of lobbying per se as a crime.

[00:07:35] Speaker 02:
The point I'm trying to make with my awkward hypothetical is simply the notion that you take any other activity, they're paying him for some other activity than on the books it appears they're paying him for, and you've got a crime.

[00:07:53] Speaker 02:
It doesn't matter whether the other activity is aircraft engines.

[00:07:57] Speaker 02:
It doesn't matter whether the other activity is lobbying.

[00:07:59] Speaker 02:
It doesn't matter what the other activity is.

[00:08:02] Speaker 02:
All this says is,

[00:08:04] Speaker 02:
You cannot falsify what you were seeking payment for.

[00:08:08] Speaker 02:
It doesn't matter what it is.

[00:08:10] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, Mr. Booty did not falsify anything in the invoices.

[00:08:16] Speaker 02:
Was Mr. Booty charged in a conspiracy?

[00:08:18] Speaker 01:
Yes, he was charged in a conspiracy, and other people did that, but there was no evidence that he knew about that.

[00:08:24] Speaker 01:
And so the only thing we're left with at that point is whether paying Mr. Low under any circumstances for congressional liaison activities or sustainment activities was illegal or that he was told up front that it was.

[00:08:40] Speaker 01:
When you look at the contract in this case, the contract specifically said that congressional liaison activities and sustainment activities on behalf of the Big Crow Program, which is a fee for service agency and not a normal executive branch agency.

[00:08:53] Speaker 01:
was allowed under that contract.

[00:08:56] Speaker 01:
There's no testimony from Ms.

[00:08:58] Speaker 01:
Golden, who was the contracting officer at the time, that she had a conversation with Mr. Booty to say that congressional liaison activities includes this and not this, that sustainment activities includes this and not this.

[00:09:11] Speaker 01:
So there was no fair notice up front at all about what was contemplated.

[00:09:16] Speaker 01:
The government was allowed, after the fact, to introduce Ms.

[00:09:19] Speaker 01:
Golden's testimony, Mr. Brennan's and Mr. Larson's,

[00:09:23] Speaker 01:
to say what they meant by that after the fact without ever providing any proof that Mr. Booty was told that upfront.

[00:09:32] Speaker 03:
That he was told you can't hire a lobbyist.

[00:09:36] Speaker 01:
Well, yes.

[00:09:38] Speaker 03:
But did someone have to tell him you can't falsify your request for payment to the government?

[00:09:45] Speaker 02:
But Your Honor, he didn't do that.

[00:09:48] Speaker 02:
There's no proof tying him to that.

[00:09:49] Speaker 03:
I don't see that he made an argument of insufficiency of the evidence.

[00:09:53] Speaker 01:
Oh yes, Your Honor, we didn't have to because it wasn't there.

[00:09:57] Speaker 01:
I mean, you know, we did make the argument in our briefs.

[00:10:02] Speaker 01:
You've got to challenge sufficiency of the evidence.

[00:10:04] Speaker 01:
I did challenge the government's assertion that there was proof that Mr. Booty knew about any of that.

[00:10:10] Speaker 02:
And have you raised more to the point, have you raised the sufficiency of the evidence challenge on appeal?

[00:10:17] Speaker 01:
Well, challenge the sufficiency of evidence about that he was of that aspect?

[00:10:24] Speaker 02:
A sufficiency of the evidence to convict him of the crimes with which he was trafficking.

[00:10:30] Speaker 02:
Oh, yes, Your Honor.

[00:10:31] Speaker 01:
I mean, that was one of the issues that we've raised in this matter.

[00:10:34] Speaker 03:
It's not in your statement in the issues of your brief.

[00:10:37] Speaker 03:
It's not in a separate section of your brief.

[00:10:42] Speaker 03:
This is the first time I'm seeing it.

[00:10:44] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor.

[00:10:46] Speaker 01:
Your Honor.

[00:10:47] Speaker 03:
You're saying we should be able to interpolate that that's what you meant, but from taking your argument on other points, is that?

[00:10:55] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, I don't think I have to challenge when there's no proof on it.

[00:11:01] Speaker 01:
Oh, you absolutely do.

[00:11:02] Speaker 01:
That's the way it works.

[00:11:04] Speaker 01:
I did say in our brief specifically,

[00:11:06] Speaker 01:
And I pointed to the testimony of Mr. Diaz throughout that there is absolutely no proof that Mr. Booty was involved in allocating the money to the contract, that he was involved in formulating any of the invoices, reviewing them, and he never even saw any

[00:11:29] Speaker 02:
I beg to differ, sir.

[00:11:32] Speaker 02:
If you're going to make a legal argument that is predicated on a challenge, a tacit challenge to the facts, it can't be tacit.

[00:11:40] Speaker 02:
You've got to make that challenge.

[00:11:43] Speaker 02:
Because the legal argument you're making is predicated

[00:11:45] Speaker 02:
on challenging the jury's finding of guilt of the false claims that he was charged with, the conspiracy to be involved in the false claims he's charged with.

[00:11:55] Speaker 02:
And if you didn't challenge that, we got to go with the facts that the jury found.

[00:12:00] Speaker 02:
And then does your legal argument hold up?

[00:12:02] Speaker 02:
And you got to help us to show how.

[00:12:05] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, there's no facts found and there's no evidence on the record.

[00:12:09] Speaker 01:
And I say this on page 10 of my opening brief.

[00:12:14] Speaker 01:
that Mr. Booty never knew that the invoices were inflated.

[00:12:18] Speaker 03:
Saying that on page 10 of your opening brief is not raising it as an issue on appeal.

[00:12:26] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honor, I was focused on the due process argument in this case.

[00:12:38] Speaker 01:
And so what we're talking about is that when we look at

[00:12:43] Speaker 01:
When we look at our reply brief at pages 5 through 8, we talk about two aspects that are raised in the Simmons case and in the Maderas case.

[00:12:57] Speaker 01:
One is that there's a complex regulatory scheme here that we were supposed to be able to elucidate on and supposed to be able to express at trial.

[00:13:09] Speaker 01:
In the record at volume 10, appendix 10,

[00:13:13] Speaker 01:
I have a colloquy with the court in that portion where we talk about this.

[00:13:19] Speaker 01:
We talk about we need to be able to show custom and practice issues.

[00:13:23] Speaker 01:
We need to be able to show that lobbying is not illegal in this context.

[00:13:28] Speaker 01:
And the court, both in its motion to dismiss and later in the trial,

[00:13:35] Speaker 01:
shifted the burden of proof to the defense on all those things.

[00:13:40] Speaker 02:
More to the point, didn't the court say explicitly that lobbying is not the issue here?

[00:13:49] Speaker 02:
That whether he was guilty of lobbying or not was not the issue?

[00:13:53] Speaker 02:
That was not what this case is about.

[00:13:56] Speaker 02:
The court expressly said that, did it not?

[00:13:59] Speaker 02:
Well, Your Honor,

[00:14:01] Speaker 01:
It allowed, if you read page volume 10, appendix 12, here's the colloquy.

[00:14:08] Speaker 01:
Mr. Baines, your honor, you have already let them say that lobbying is illegal to the jury.

[00:14:13] Speaker 01:
The court, well, I let you say it wasn't illegal.

[00:14:15] Speaker 01:
And then I said, and so we are able to go back and forth on this as a matter of fact and in terms of how it was construed at the time.

[00:14:23] Speaker 01:
Ultimately, what I said on page 16 of the same colloquy is that the jury has to understand what Mr. Booty understood at the time and what he was told, or what type of framework he was operating in.

[00:14:36] Speaker 01:
The court conceded during the same colloquy that this was a complex area.

[00:14:40] Speaker 02:
Let me just back up for a quick second.

[00:14:43] Speaker 02:
At one point early on, you said that, at least as I understood you, there was a merger of the ex post facto and due process argument.

[00:14:51] Speaker 02:
And at least to my ear, that struck me as strange.

[00:14:55] Speaker 02:
But didn't the Supreme Court say that if there is a specific constitutional right that you can proceed on, that invoking substantive due process is not appropriate?

[00:15:05] Speaker 02:
That's my understanding.

[00:15:08] Speaker 02:
Do you have a different view?

[00:15:09] Speaker 02:
And if you do, what law do you have for that?

[00:15:11] Speaker 02:
In other words, if you do have an ex post facto claim, that is the claim, is it not?

[00:15:18] Speaker 01:
Well, we have two separate claims, Your Honor.

[00:15:21] Speaker 01:
We had expressed it as an ex post facto claim because of the way the government reinterpreted the prohibitions on lobbying in the context of the complex federal scheme.

[00:15:37] Speaker 01:
And the court shifted those burdens

[00:15:42] Speaker 01:
and made them affirmative defenses, and then precluded us from talking about it and introducing Mr. Magnuson's testimony to explain the context.

[00:15:50] Speaker 02:
I guess my question was, as a categorical matter, if you have an ex post facto claim, how is it appropriate to merge that with the substantive due process claim?

[00:16:03] Speaker 01:
Well, I think it's all a violation of due process to apply ex post facto interpretations of a statute

[00:16:12] Speaker 01:
or of a statutory prohibition.

[00:16:16] Speaker 01:
Because it's not fair?

[00:16:17] Speaker 01:
Well, because it violates due process.

[00:16:21] Speaker 01:
Because it's a reinterpretation of what the law was at the time.

[00:16:25] Speaker 03:
Well, then it violates ex post facto.

[00:16:27] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:16:29] Speaker 03:
Which is different than due process.

[00:16:31] Speaker 01:
Well, but the due process elements are what we've said.

[00:16:33] Speaker 01:
We've also raised the due process elements, and that includes the administrative requirements that there be a fiscal law investigation and finding up front similar to what we had in Simmons and what we've raised in our briefs.

[00:16:57] Speaker 01:
And then secondly, that there be fair notice and an opportunity to present that there are alternative interpretations of this regulatory regime.

[00:17:05] Speaker 01:
There's no elegant way to stop you, so I'm going to need to stop you.

[00:17:09] Speaker 02:
I'm sorry, Your Honor.

[00:17:09] Speaker 02:
All right.

[00:17:10] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:17:14] Speaker 00:
Counsel, I'm Assistant U.S.

[00:17:16] Speaker 00:
Attorney Jeremy Pena, and I represent the United States at both the appellate and trial level in the matter of the United States versus Milton Booty.

[00:17:24] Speaker 00:
Appellant presents more than a dozen issues for this court to consider in his briefs, including the reply brief.

[00:17:33] Speaker 00:
Each issue suffers from many of the same deficiencies, deficiencies in briefing, citation, and overall framing for this court to analyze the issue or even to discern which exact issue is being raised.

[00:17:48] Speaker 00:
Furthermore, as to the evidentiary issues, Mr. Booty does not argue cumulative error.

[00:17:53] Speaker 00:
And so each of those evidentiary issues must be considered in isolation.

[00:17:59] Speaker 00:
And most importantly, as your honors were presenting to Appellants' Council, he does not challenge, he does not present a framed up challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence overall.

[00:18:13] Speaker 00:
Furthermore, for the duration of trial and all the way up to and including the reply brief,

[00:18:19] Speaker 00:
He has not provided a succinct defense theory of the case that this court could use to analyze the government's harmless error arguments.

[00:18:29] Speaker 00:
He does not object to the jury instructions either.

[00:18:32] Speaker 00:
And so the notion, the allusion to burden shifting is simply not before the court either.

[00:18:40] Speaker 00:
At trial, the government presented evidence that in 2004, Mr. Booty, the program director of the Big Crow Program Office, circumvented the entire federal procurement process to make a handshake agreement with George Lowe.

[00:18:53] Speaker 00:
At a time when Big Crow had no funds available, Mr. Booty promised to pay Mr. Lowe $15,000 a month to lobby Congress to direct funding to Big Crow.

[00:19:04] Speaker 00:
And when George Lowe succeeded, Mr. Booty promised him a bonus of 10% of the newly appropriated funds.

[00:19:12] Speaker 00:
Now, I'd like to turn the Court's attention to the multiple theories of illegality that the United States very clearly presented to the jury, and these are

[00:19:24] Speaker 00:
Also very clearly stated in the response brief, Mr. Booty's agreement with Mr. Lowe was improper for the following reasons.

[00:19:31] Speaker 00:
First, he never commemorated the agreement in writing at all.

[00:19:35] Speaker 00:
This was purely an oral, handshake agreement.

[00:19:38] Speaker 00:
And it also directs the court's attention to the concession that Appellants' Council made on the record regarding that illegality.

[00:19:48] Speaker 00:
In the response brief at page 47, Mr. Bain said,

[00:19:54] Speaker 00:
to the court, you know, Mr. Magnuson, the proffered defense expert, is not going to say that an oral contract is enforceable ever.

[00:20:02] Speaker 00:
And so, and you know, if they're able to prove that he, that Mr. Booty entered into an oral contract with Mr. Lowe, if the jury buys that, you know, and that he actually worked that summer, you know, at all, which Mr. Guerin said no, I mean, if the jury buys that, then you know, that would be, that would, Mr. Magnuson would even agree that that would be an illegal contract.

[00:20:23] Speaker 00:
The second theory that the United States presented was that Mr. Booty circumvented the entire federal procurement process in retaining Lowe.

[00:20:30] Speaker 00:
The third theory was that Mr. Booty was not a contracting officer and therefore lacked authority to enter into a payment agreement on behalf of the government.

[00:20:39] Speaker 00:
The fourth theory was that there was no funding in place at the time of the agreement or at the time of Mr. Lowe's performance of work on the agreement.

[00:20:48] Speaker 00:
The fifth theory was that the payment terms were totally foreign to federal procurement practices.

[00:20:53] Speaker 00:
Only the sixth theory of illegality was that the agreement was for lobbying services which are closely scrutinized in federal contracting.

[00:21:01] Speaker 02:
You talk about these theories, but in fact, isn't this just a false claim?

[00:21:05] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:21:06] Speaker 02:
Matters?

[00:21:06] Speaker 02:
So these theories actually play into what the defendant wants to do, which is talk about what procurement law is.

[00:21:13] Speaker 02:
That doesn't really matter, does it?

[00:21:14] Speaker 02:
What matters is I submitted a claim to pay x

[00:21:18] Speaker 02:
which was not for acts.

[00:21:20] Speaker 02:
That's it, right?

[00:21:22] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:21:23] Speaker 00:
And the court properly instructed the jury not to consider whether the lobbying was in fact legal or illegal and explained to the jury that those theories of illegality and the lobbying are only to be considered for the defendant's motive

[00:21:39] Speaker 00:
intent, knowledge, et cetera, in formulating, in requiring other people to formulate fraudulent invoices.

[00:21:48] Speaker 02:
And that's the way you're presenting those theories here, right?

[00:21:51] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:21:52] Speaker 00:
Okay.

[00:21:52] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:21:53] Speaker 00:
So ultimately, those were reasons that it was incontrovertible that the defendant, Mr. Booty, knew that there was not a legal way to pay on this agreement, and yet he forced his contractors to pay on this agreement.

[00:22:08] Speaker 00:
So those theories show that Mr. Booty knew what he was doing was illegal and was going to result in fraudulent invoices when he directed those contractors to pay George Lowe.

[00:22:28] Speaker 00:
As to the due process issue that was discussed in Appellant's

[00:22:36] Speaker 00:
Part of the oral argument.

[00:22:38] Speaker 02:
Let me be clear on this.

[00:22:40] Speaker 02:
You're saying that because of those theories, he knew there wasn't a legal way to pay Mr. Lowe.

[00:22:48] Speaker 02:
I thought, and perhaps misunderstood, that essentially the kernel here is that there were invoices submitted

[00:22:57] Speaker 02:
that were designed to pay Mr. Low, and it was understood by the people submitting the invoices that Mr. Low did something else.

[00:23:07] Speaker 02:
And Mr. Booty also understood that he was going to pay Mr. Low for doing something else.

[00:23:17] Speaker 00:
Absolutely, Your Honor.

[00:23:18] Speaker 00:
Up until the last moment, and I would agree that the defense is correct when they say that the United States did not present evidence that Mr. Booty saw the fraudulent invoices himself.

[00:23:29] Speaker 02:
Well, he didn't have to see them.

[00:23:30] Speaker 02:
Did he know that these entities were paying Mr. Lowe for things that were not what Mr. Lowe was doing for Mr. Booty?

[00:23:42] Speaker 00:
Yes, absolutely.

[00:23:43] Speaker 02:
Okay.

[00:23:44] Speaker 02:
I guess what I'm saying is if it is essential that he know that there was no legal way to pay Mr. Lowe, doesn't that get you into whether in fact the procurement regulations would allow Mr. Lowe to be paid for the activities that he engaged in, whether Mr. Lowe could be paid for lobbying?

[00:24:08] Speaker 02:
Doesn't it get you into all of that?

[00:24:10] Speaker 00:
Not deeply, Your Honor, because of the overwhelmingly illegal nature of the agreement.

[00:24:20] Speaker 00:
You don't need an expert to say a handshake agreement is not enforceable in federal contracting law.

[00:24:27] Speaker 00:
Everyone knows that.

[00:24:29] Speaker 00:
Every single witness understood that.

[00:24:31] Speaker 00:
Defense witnesses testified to that.

[00:24:35] Speaker 00:
the multiplicity of theories of illegality just underscore the fact that it is not a matter of technical contracting interpretation.

[00:24:44] Speaker 03:
It doesn't matter what the subject of your handshake agreement is.

[00:24:48] Speaker 03:
It still violates the government procurement rules.

[00:24:52] Speaker 00:
Correct.

[00:24:52] Speaker 00:
Absolutely, Your Honor.

[00:24:53] Speaker 00:
Mr. Lowe could have been performing, as Your Honor suggested, engineering services.

[00:24:58] Speaker 00:
It didn't matter.

[00:24:59] Speaker 00:
The government's case would have changed only

[00:25:01] Speaker 00:
In a tiny degree the jury instructions would have been the same the verdict would have been the same If your honors have no other questions, I'll see back the remainder of my time Case is submitted.

[00:25:22] Speaker 02:
Thank you counsel