Parallel developments may be discerned with respect to the application of a general criminal statute to call into question the legislative conduct and motivation of a Member. Thus, inUnited States v. Johnson, the Court voided the conviction of a Member for conspiracy to impair lawful governmental functions, in the course of seeking to divert a governmental inquiry into alleged wrongdoing, by accepting a bribe to make a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. The speech was charged as part of the conspiracy and extensive evidence concerning it was introduced at a trial. It was this examination into the context of the speech--its authorship, motivation, and content--which the Court found foreclosed by the speech-or-debate clause.
However, inUnited States v. Brewster, while continuing to assert that the clause ''must be read broadly to effectuate its purpose of protecting the independence of the Legislative branch,'' the Court substantially reduced the scope of the coverage of the clause. In upholding the validity of an indictment of a Member, which charged that he accepted a bribe to be ''influenced in his performance of official acts in respect to his action, vote, and decision'' on legislation, the Court drew a distinction between a prosecution that caused an inquiry into legislative acts or the motivation for performance of such acts and a prosecution for taking or agreeing to take money for a promise to act in a certain way. The former is proscribed, the latter is not. ''Taking a bribe is, obviously, no part of the legislative process or function; it is not a legislative act. It is not, by any conceivable interpretation, an act performed as a part of or even incidental to the role of a legislator . . . Nor is inquiry into a legislative act or the motivation for a legislative act necessary to a prosecution under this statute or this indictment. When a bribe is taken, it does not matter whether the promise for which the bribe was given was for the performance of a legislative act as here or, as inJohnson, for use of a Congressman's influence with the Executive Branch.'' In other words, it is the fact of having taken a bribe, not the act the bribe is intended to influence, which is the subject of the prosecution and the speech-or-debate clause interposes no obstacle to this type of prosecution.
Applying in the criminal context the distinction developed in the civil cases between protected ''legislative activity'' and unprotected conduct prior to or subsequent to engaging in ''legislative activity,'' the Court inGravel v. United States, held that a grand jury could validly inquire into the processes by which the Member obtained classified government documents and into the arrangements for subsequent private republication of these documents, since neither action involved protected conduct. ''While the Speech or Debate Clause recognizes speech, voting and other legislative acts as exempt from liability that might otherwise attach, it does not privilege either Senator or aide to violate an otherwise valid criminal law in preparing for or implementing legislative acts.''
NY Times, May 25, 2006 
I'd love a chance to stir things up. 
