US government being horrendously incompetent is like the least surprising revelation this case could make. I mean we just witnessed the head of the service which was created to protect the President from all imaginable threats to claim it's impossible to put a sniper on a slightly sloped roof - right after a sniper shot a (former) President from that roof. Compared to that level of incompetence, a botched prosecution is small change. They probably have thousands under their collective belts.

It feels like a straightforward federal private->private bribery law would run into the commerce clause of the constitution so we have this hodge-podge instead. Perhaps some states have more straightforward statutes.