Opinion ID: 547455
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fee Appraisers as Public Officials

Text: 61 In Dixson the Supreme Court interpreted the term public official to mean a person who occupies a position of public trust with official federal responsibilities. 465 U.S. at 496, 104 S.Ct. at 1180. The Court made clear, however, that employment by the United States or some other similarly formal contractual or agency bond is not a prerequisite to an individual's being a public official. Id. at 498, 104 S.Ct. at 1181. 62 A VA fee appraiser falls within both the plain language, and the Supreme Court's interpretation, of the bribery statute. In the Court's terms, he has official federal responsibilities: it is upon his recommendation, subject to minimal review, that the Government guarantees a loan. And his is a position of public trust: a fee appraiser must certify that he knows the applicable regulations and must promise not to accept any assignment for which he has a conflict of interest or to take any payment other than the appraiser's fee set by the Government. Jakey Madeoy, as a VA fee appraiser, was therefore a person acting for or on behalf of [an] agency ... in [an] official function, under or by authority of any such ... agency, i.e., a public official. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 201(a)(1). 63 The regulation to which the appellants refer us, which says that a fee appraiser is not an agent of the Government, 38 C.F.R. Sec. 36.4301, has no bearing upon our decision; no one is trying to attribute to the Government an act of Jakey Madeoy as its agent. In any event, the Supreme Court's conclusion that a person does not have to be in a contractual or agency relationship with the Government in order to be a public official, Dixson, 465 U.S. at 498, 104 S.Ct. at 1180, makes the regulation irrelevant to our interpretation of the bribery statute. 64 Finally, the decision that we reach today does not implicate the rule of lenity. The appellants have presented no reason, and we see none, why the statute is any more ambiguous with respect to a VA fee appraiser than with respect to the corporate officers in Dixson, where the Supreme Court expressly found that because Congress's intent was sufficiently clear, there was no need to resort to the rule of lenity. Id. at 500 n. 19, 104 S.Ct. at 1182 n. 19. Accordingly, we conclude that the statute brings a VA fee appraiser within the definition of public official clearly enough that the rule of lenity does not apply.