Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National

Dowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert

Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis foundations.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome the backstory, the show that explains the history behind headlines. I'm Brian

Ballot. I'm Joanne Freeman. And I'm Nathan Connelly. We're going to start today's show

with a guy who gets a lot of calls at work. The calls really are of one or two varieties.

One is I am in trouble, the FBI knocked on my door. What do I do?

This is Elliott Burke, a lawyer in Washington DC. Burke specializes in congressional ethics.

Or, hey, I've assumed some office or we're taking on some new initiative. We want to make sure we don't have any problems moving forward.

Burke helps elected officials and staffers figure out if what they're doing or what they've done is corrupt.

He's counseled plenty of heavy hitters, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Now, whether or not your corrupt seems pretty straightforward, right? But it's not.

This, after all, is Washington DC. Burke says that a few years ago a congressional staffer came to him with a predicament.

Did she face any ethics issues in accepting an engagement ring?

If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to propose to you and gives you a ring, technically speaking that needs to be pre-cleared by the ethics committees.

Why? Because members of Congress and staffers are not allowed to receive gifts worth more than $50.

Unless, says Burke, the recipient can prove the gift is from a personal friend. That can get complicated in the highly networked world of Washington.

Sometimes personal relationships come under scrutiny.

I had a conversation with one of the ethics councils in which I was told that it was actually better if you were living with your boyfriend or girlfriend.

Because then it shows a history of sort of sharing the rant and reciprocal gifts back and forth than if you were living apart.

Burke says that a lot of these convoluted rules are the products of scandals that have rocked Capitol Hill over the years.

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