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12 

KELLY v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

States  4,  32;  see  supra,  at  5.  Maybe,  as  the  Government
contends, all of this work was “needed” to realize the final 
plan—“to accomplish what [Baroni and Kelly] were trying 
to do with the [B]ridge.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. 60.  Even if so, it 
would make no difference.  Every regulatory decision (think 
again  of  Cleveland,  see  supra,  at  11)  requires  the  use  of
some employee labor.  But that does not mean every scheme
to alter a regulation has that labor as its object.  Baroni’s 
and Kelly’s plan aimed to impede access from Fort Lee to 
the George Washington Bridge.  The cost of the employee
hours spent on implementing that plan was its incidental
byproduct.

To  rule  otherwise  would  undercut  this  Court’s  oft-
repeated  instruction:  Federal  prosecutors  may  not  use
property fraud statutes to “set[ ] standards of disclosure and 
good government for local and state officials.”  McNally, 483 
U. S., at 360; see supra, at 7.  Much of governance involves 
(as it did here) regulatory choice.  If U. S. Attorneys could
prosecute as property fraud every lie a state or local official
tells  in  making  such  a  decision,  the  result  would  be—as 
Cleveland  recognized—“a  sweeping  expansion  of  federal
criminal jurisdiction.”  531 U. S., at 24.  And if those prose-
cutors could end-run Cleveland just by pointing to the reg-
ulation’s  incidental  costs,  the  same  ballooning  of  federal 
power  would  follow.    In  effect,  the  Federal  Government 
could use the criminal law to enforce (its view of ) integrity 
in broad swaths of state and local policymaking.  The prop-
erty fraud statutes do not countenance that outcome.  They
do not “proscribe[ ] schemes to defraud citizens of their in-
tangible  rights  to  honest  and  impartial  government.” 
McNally, 483 U. S., at 355; see supra, at 7.  They bar only
schemes for obtaining property. 

III 
As Kelly’s own lawyer  acknowledged, this case involves
an  “abuse  of  power.”    Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  19.    For  no  reason