As the gaming and legal worlds have had time to absorb the new opinion on the Wire Act reversal issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the harsh criticisms of said opinion have started to fly.

One of the latest comes from Peter J. Ferrara, former associate deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, in the form of an op-ed in the USA Today. The OLC’s reversal of the previous Wire Act opinion, Ferrara says, is the most “corrupt, unethical and legally bankrupt” decision he has ever seen the United States Justice Department make.

From the moment the OLC, then a part of the Obama Justice Department, issued its opinion on the Wire Act in 2011 in which it said that it only made interstate sports betting illegal, Las Vegas Sands CEO and Republican king maker Sheldon Adelson spring into action, making it his mission to end online gambling in the United States.

He has claimed it is to protect children and vulnerable gamblers, but everyone knows it is because he sees online gambling as a threat to his brick-and-mortar gambling empire.

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