Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/16-309_h31i.pdf
Page Number: 17.0

Cite as:  582 U. S. ____ (2017) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

Government  must  make  a  two-part  showing  to  meet  its
burden.  As  an  initial  matter,  the  Government  has  to 
prove  that  the  misrepresented  fact  was  sufficiently  rele-
vant  to  one  or  another  naturalization  criterion  that  it 
would  have  prompted  reasonable  officials,  “seeking  only 
evidence  concerning  citizenship  qualifications,”  to  under-
take further investigation.  Id., at 774, n. 9.  If that much 
is  true,  the  inquiry  turns  to  the  prospect  that  such  an
investigation  would  have  borne  disqualifying  fruit.    As  to 
that second link in the causal chain, the Government need 
not  show  definitively  that  its  investigation  would  have
unearthed a disqualifying fact (though, of course, it may). 
Rather,  the  Government  need  only  establish  that  the
investigation  “would  predictably  have  disclosed”  some
legal disqualification.  Id., at 774; see id., at 783 (Brennan, 
J., concurring).  If that is so, the defendant’s misrepresen-
tation contributed to the citizenship award in the way we
think §1425(a) requires.

That standard reflects two real-world attributes of cases 
premised on what an unhindered investigation would have 
found.  First is the difficulty of proving that a hypothetical
inquiry  would  have  led  to  some  disqualifying  discovery, 
often  several  years  after  the  defendant  told  her  lies.    As 
witnesses and other evidence disappear, the Government’s
effort  to  reconstruct  the  course  of  a  “could  have  been” 
investigation  confronts  ever-mounting  obstacles.    See  id., 
at  779  (opinion  of  Scalia,  J.).    Second,  and  critical  to  our 
analysis,  is  that  the  defendant—not  the  Government—
bears  the  blame  for  that  evidentiary  predicament.    After 
all,  the  inquiry  cannot  get  this  far  unless  the  defendant 
made  an  unlawful  false  statement  and,  by  so  doing,  ob-
structed the normal course of an investigation.  See id., at 
783  (Brennan,  J.,  concurring)  (emphasizing  that  “the
citizen’s  misrepresentation  [in  a  naturalization  proceed-
ing] necessarily frustrated the Government’s investigative 
efforts”); see also Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 327