Most Americans have no idea that under Chief Justice Roberts, there are 73 of these five to four partisan decisions in which there was a big Republican donor interest implicated. And in 73 out of 73, the big Republican donor interest won.

There's a strong argument that Trump's violation of basic constitutional anti-corruption

norms ought to be part of the conversation, ought to be an article of impeachment.

Hi, and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's biweekly podcast about the Supreme Court, the courts, the law, the rule of law, and justice.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and this week's show is kind of jam-packed because there's a whole lot of law going on in the world since we last

spoke. Later on in the show, we're going to talk about Mitch McConnell's takeover of the federal

bench. And we are actually going to return to the emoluments clause, which is, it's still a thing.

But first, we're introducing a new segment this week in which we ask an expert to answer a burning question from our listeners. And this week's question is really, what the heck is a quid pro quo? So we're picking up the new amicus bat phone and calling in to a former amicus guest, Mimi Roca, for some help. She's currently Pace Law School's

Distinguished Fellow in Criminal Justice and a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. Before that,

she was an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 2001 to 2017,

where she successfully prosecuted and tried numerous cases, including several high-profile organized crime cases.

So the question for Mimi this week is, what's a quid pro quo?

How do you know if one has taken place?

And how would a prosecutor go about proving that when it happened?

So, okay, quid pro quo literally is or means a thing for a thing, something for something.

So the classic example and one that, you know, believe it or not, I saw many times, it still

happens, is a mob shakedown, where you have an associate working for

a mob boss, and he goes to a store in Brooklyn, say, and says, you give me $5,000 a month,

or else you might see some windows broken on your store every couple of weeks. And we're not going to

protect you. Okay? And of course, that store pays up and they get the protection. And what's

amazing to me about the impeachment scenario that we're talking about with Ukraine is how similar

it is to that, right?

...