“I’ve learned from my mistakes. Now I can repeat them exactly.”

Dudley Moore

It is a reversal of a reversal of a reversal, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stands exposed in an untenable contradiction. The new 2018 party line is that the Wire Act makes all Internet gambling illegal, regardless of the format or the types of games offered.

But this policy is a reversal of the policy before that, delivered by the Obama administration in 2011. And the 2011 shift followed the language of the statute and the case law to determine that the Wire Act only covered sports bets. But this in turn contradicted the announced policy of the last Bush administration, that the Wire Act was interpreted (or twisted) to cover all online gaming. Before that, under the Clinton administration, the matter had been essentially left to the states. At least that’s constitutionally sound.