In Castle Rock, CO vs Gonzalez, 2005 , one of the supreme court justices is asked "Then what was the point of getting the restraining order" and a reply is heard "to ask the police to do their job". (and nothing more . ie. they don't HAVE to help you if you ask).
So we've established asking the police to do their job is OK. And surely speech is a way to do that. And we know money is speech.
So does that mean it's legal for me to "ask" the police to investigate someone or something by giving them a few million dollars?
Doesn't that also mean I could continually give them millions to investigate something or other to keep them nice and busy so they don't have time or resources to investigate whatever I'm doing on the side?
Money is speech in the context of political donations and advertisements, per Citizens United, in which the Supreme Court that the First Amendment prohibited the US government from "restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations"[0].
Money is not speech in all contexts, nor does it follow that because speech is protected by the First Amendment, all monetary transactions are thus equally protected by an equivalence of money to speech. And even if it were the case, the First Amendment doesn't prohibit all limitations on speech, just limitations by the Federal government (and even then, the Supreme Court allows Federal law to govern speech in limited instances[1], such as regulating the airwaves, food labeling.)
Despite the ruling of Citizens United and its implications, which are narrower than "money is speech" implies in the naive case, laws involving money such as theft, embezzlement, and bribery remain on the books. Paying the police to not investigate crimes would obviously not be legal, if for no other reason than the most obvious: there are already laws against it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think I need to be to call this one.
> So we've established asking the police to do their job is OK
No, we haven't.
A reply heard during oral argument has no binding precedential force.
(And, even if we had, restraining orders are issued by courts; so we would have established that a court of law asking police do due their work is okay.)
> And we know money is speech.
“Money is speech” in the sense that expending your money to publish speech, not in the sense that giving money to people you are trying to sway is speech. (The political speech cases you rely on for that were about independent expenditures for public propaganda, not bribes to politicians.)
> So does that mean it's legal for me to "ask" the police to investigate someone or something by giving them a few million dollars?
In Castle Rock, CO vs Gonzalez, 2005 , one of the supreme court justices is asked "Then what was the point of getting the restraining order" and a reply is heard "to ask the police to do their job". (and nothing more . ie. they don't HAVE to help you if you ask).
So we've established asking the police to do their job is OK. And surely speech is a way to do that. And we know money is speech.
So does that mean it's legal for me to "ask" the police to investigate someone or something by giving them a few million dollars?
Doesn't that also mean I could continually give them millions to investigate something or other to keep them nice and busy so they don't have time or resources to investigate whatever I'm doing on the side?