Is it illegal for someone holding a public office in the United States to accept money intended as a bribe if they do not act on the bribe? Theoretically say that an individual is offered a bribe from someone to not do action X. The individual accepts the money, but does action X anyways. The bribe was, obviously, not part of a legally binding document. If the officer in question discloses the bribe, pays tax on it etc, and continues to do the action they intended despite the bribe, are they legally allowed to accept it? In this case assume a situation with a simple binary option of doing either X or Y so that it's obvious that the officer either was or was not influenced by the bribe, with no ambiguous middle ground. For instance perhaps they were bribed to not report a violation of an appropriate law that they did report.
Bribery is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty. 1 The money was offered to influence the actions of the official: it is irrelevant if the actions were influenced or not - its a bribe and, in most jurisdictions, accepting a bribe is a crime. The ethically correct behavior for the official (and the one that affords them the greatest legal protection) is to refuse the bribe if this is a safe thing to do (many bribes come with an implicit threat) or accept the money and then ASAP turn it over to the relevant law enforcement as proceeds of crime, report the bribery to relevant law enforcement, and recuse themselves from the decision: the fact that a bribe was offered raises the perception that the decision they make will be biased against the briber, that is, it will not be an impartial decision.
The first point that is already well-established in law is that there really is a legal requirement to pay taxes, not just federal income taxes, but taxes in general. On rare occasion, there is a legal dispute as to whether something is a tax (Obamacare) or whether a particular authority is allowed to levy such a tax. Let us assume that the tax in question is legally levied. Some taxes are independent of any specific intended purpose (e.g. federal income tax, state sales tax). Some are for a specific purpose (Medicare tax, the taxes that are local school levies). Even when a taxing authority corruptly but legally misdirects the funds designated for a specific purpose, you are still required to pay the tax. It's not that a tax law could not be written which allows a person to refuse to pay a tax if they judge that the revenues are being misdirected, it's that the law-makers did no cripple the tax law with such a provision. As far as I know, no taxing authority anywhere allows a person to refuse to pay a tax is they disagree with the use of the taxes, which is to say, taxation is mandatory, not voluntary. If it is voluntary, it is known as a &quot;contribution&quot;. You are allowed to contribute to some governmental purpose, you are required to pay taxes. You can't overcome the requirement to pay taxes on First Amendment grounds (being forced to support something that you don't like). The IRS has a FAQ that addresses the First Amendment argument, with a mass of supporting court cases (US v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252; Jenkins v. Commissioner, 483 F.3d 90; US v. Indianapolis Baptist Temple, 224 F.3d 627; Adams v. Commissioner, 170 F.3d 173; US v. Ramsey, 992 F.2d 831; and so on).
In the United States, the answer depends on who is unlawfully in power. In the hypothetical you presented, the answer is probably that the law would remain valid, as Congress generally has the sole authority to pass judgment on whether to admit the elected person. A third party would not have the ability to challenge the law based on the qualifications of a lawmaker. But if we were dealing with an administrative official promulgating regulations, those rules would generally be void if that official were unlawfully appointed. That was the case in Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), where a cola distributor challenged a labor regulation, saying that the members of the NLRB who enacted it were improperly appointed. The Court agreed that the appointments were improper, so the regulations were nullified. A judicial decision coming out under these circumstances would also be nullified if one of the judges weren't really a judge. That happened just last year, in Yovino v. Rizo. In that case, ten judges from the Ninth Circuit heard a case, and the vote split 6-4. But the author of the majority opinion died before the decision was published, which is when it become effective. The Supreme Court held that because there were therefore only five votes for that decision, it was not a majority opinion, and therefore not binding on future Ninth Circuit panels.
International organizations such as the UN are typically treated similar to foreign governments, and thus enjoy various privileges. One consequence is that typically, income from employment by these organizations is not subject to taxation by the host countries where the employee lives or carries out their work. However, the details depend very much on the tax laws in that host country. The employee might still be required to file taxes, but would then likely be able to declare the income as tax-free under the corresponding provision of the national tax law. This usually also depends a lot on the treaties which created the international organisation. For example, the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations contains an explicit tax exemption for UN officials, though not necessarily for regular employees. As an example for how a country treats employees of international organization, the IRS has guidance regarding US tax law here. Other countries tend to have similar rules, albeit with less accessible online documentation :)
Let's start with the most important point first: A campaign finance violation is not a ground to remove an elected official from office, no matter how egregious, on its own, even if one could prove that the campaign finance violation probably caused the outcome of an election to change. Congress could decide, however, that a campaign finance violation constitutes a "high crime or misdemeanor" for which a sitting President could be impeached, if a majority of the House of Representatives votes to impeach the President and a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate trying the impeachment under the supervision of the Chief Justice of the United States (that and not "Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court" is the official title) finds that the offense set forth in the impeachment has been committed and constitutes sufficient grounds to remove the President from office. At the outset, there is some ambiguity over whether the violation of campaign finance laws would have been by individual person, or the political campaign of the individual person (which is a Section 529 non-profit organization). The individual or the campaign, as the case might be, would definitely owe either civil or criminal fines, as the case might be, for a violation of the particular campaign finance laws that the individual or campaign is alleged to have violated. The violation could also affect the ability of the violator to obtain all or any amount of federal matching funds in a future election. Depending upon the particular campaign finance law involved, which isn't clearly specified, there might be a criminal penalty (either a misdemeanor or a minor felony) as well, which could give rise to a probation sentence, a sentence to some period of incarceration, a period of post-release parole, criminal fines, court costs, and, at least in the case of a felony, some collateral consequences of that conviction such as a prohibition on owning a gun and ineligibility for many occupations and jobs. Neither a civil campaign finance violation, nor a criminal conviction for a campaign finance violation, disqualifies someone from holding the office of President. The President does not have immunity from civil or criminal consequences of campaign finance violations committed prior to taking office, and the President's campaign, at a minimum, is not immune to campaign finance violations at any time. Presidential immunity from liability is limited to the conduct of the President while holding the office in furtherance of the governance duties of the President. Generally speaking, campaigning would not be a governance duty of the President, but there are factual circumstances under which it is hard to distinguish between what constitutes governing and what constitutes campaigning in the case of a sitting President who is currently in office. Also, campaign finance violations can't be prosecuted by just anyone. A violation of federal campaign finance laws must be prosecuted by a federal government lawyer authorized to do so by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which has an even partisan balance of members by design and almost always deadlocks on motions to prosecute anything but the least controversial and most blatant campaign finance violations against members of either of the two major political parties in the United States. A "private attorney general" can't bring a lawsuit to enforce campaign finance laws unilaterally. The President can definitely pardon a criminal violation of a campaign finance law by anyone other than himself. The President definitely cannot pardon a civil violation of a campaign finance law by anyone. The majority and more analytically sound position is that the President cannot pardon himself for his own criminal violation of a campaign finance law (there are prior questions and answer at Law.SE regarding that question). A judge considering a campaign finance violation charge against a sitting President could, however, take steps short of dismissing the charges that could accommodate a sitting President. For example, the judge could be very deferential to the President in setting hearing dates, allowing the President to participate in proceedings by telephone or (in some but not all cases) through a representative, or in setting the amount of a bond or the terms of pre-trial release in the event of a criminal charge, or in cooperating with the President's security detail when the President is required to appear. In a civil violation case, the President would probably be allowed to be a deposition witness, with the deposition testimony used at trial, rather than appearing in person at trial, if his lawyers requested that treatment.
Because there is no duty to be honest Generally, there is no duty of honesty except in specific circumstances. These include: when under penalty of perjury when negotiating a contract when immediate and direct harm would result from dishonesty (e.g. telling someone it was safe to cross the road when it wasn’t) under most consumer protection laws, when engaged in trade or commerce (which politics isn’t) Definitions differ but fraud requires both dishonesty and deception to acquire property or money or to cause loss. A vote is not property or money. While donations involve money, they are gifts and are given without expectation of reciprocity.
Unless there is a law or regulation against it, it is legal. However in a big government it can be practically impossible to determine whether something is legal. For example, nobody even knows how many criminal statutes have been promulgated by the U.S. federal government. And that's nothing compared to the volume of executive regulation and judicial case-law that determines whether something is illegal. I.e., in practice determining that something is legal is a bit like proving a negative. Furthermore, if you look long enough some argue that you can probably find some law under which almost any action could be considered illegal. Note also that even if it is not against the law, it could be proscribed by contract (read your Terms and Conditions!), and breach of contract is in general &ndash; but with an astonishing number of exceptions! &ndash; illegal.
What you linked to is a list of definitions of terms used in the laws of Arkansas. The actual Arkansas law on gifts to elected officials reads as such: Persons elected or appointed to select offices, including members of the general assembly, shall not solicit or accept a gift from a lobbyist or a person acting on behalf of one. A lobbyist shall not offer or pay for food or drink at more than 1 planned activity in a 7 day period. Does not prohibit the acceptance of: (1) Food, drink, informational materials, or other items included in a conference registration fee; and (2) Food and drink at events coordinated through the regional or national conference and provided to persons registered to attend. Ark. Const. art. XIX,§ 30. http://www.ncsl.org/research/ethics/50-state-table-gift-laws.aspx The official is just not supposed to accept gifts, besides the provision for lobbyists to pay for food or drink. It's not that they can take a gift and pay $100 dollars.