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Rh As noted, the decision below was based squarely on the Second Circuit’s 1982 decision in Margiotta, and we therefore begin by briefly recounting the events that led up to and followed that decision. The federal wire fraud statute, §1343 (like the older federal mail fraud statute, §1341), targets the use of certain instrumentalities to advance “any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.” Before 1987, “all Courts of Appeals had embraced” the view that these statutes proscribe what came to be known as “honest-services fraud.” Skilling v. United States, 561 U. S. 358, 401 (2010). In most of these cases, public employees had accepted a bribe or kickback in exchange for dishonest conduct that did not necessarily cause their employers to suffer a financial loss, but this conduct was found to constitute mail or wire fraud because it deprived the relevant government unit (and thus, by extension, the public) of the right to receive honest services. See id., at 400–401.

In Margiotta, the Second Circuit faced a case that departed from this pattern. Joseph Margiotta chaired the Republican Party Committees for Nassau County and the town of Hempstead, New York, and he used the influence that came with those positions to carry out a kickback scheme. He was indicted for honest-services mail fraud, and although he held “no elective office,” the prosecution argued that he nevertheless breached a duty to render honest services because his party positions “afforded him sufficient power and prestige to exert substantial control over