The fact that it's marked “confidential” from the start imposes an obligation on them to address that question. They would say to themselves, “I didn't ask for this information. It may have been accidentally dropped here. It doesn't belong to me. I didn't ask for it. I'm not really privy to what all this is about, but it sure is interesting, and it's marked secret/confidential.”
I would say the first obligation on the businessman is to find out who it does belong to, and to return it. But if he chooses not to do that and he chooses to use it for his own commercial benefit, then you get into the trouble of how do you police that. How are you going to actually bring back that commercial action by that businessman to that document? The fingerprints just aren't there. Do you know what I mean?
In the case of a lobbyist, you have the Lobbying Act. And don't forget, members are public office holders, as are their staff. So there may be avenues where the former employee, as a public office holder, could be subject to some action for his conduct here if it's outside the authority of the employer member. If he was acting without the authority of the employer member in what he did, he may have problems as a public office holder.
And the lobbyists themselves.... The problem is, if you go to the code--and that's what she's responsible for enforcing.... I'm not a lobbyist, I can assure you, and I must not understand lobbyists very well, but one of the provisions of the code--and it may not surprise you that it's not a very long code, it only has eight articles, and each of them is very short--the fifth one, is called “insider information”. And it reads as follows:
Lobbyists shall not use any confidential or other insider information obtained in the course of their lobbying activities to the disadvantage of their client, employer or organization.
Then under “confidential information” it says:
Lobbyists shall not divulge confidential information unless they have obtained the informed consent of their client, employer or organization, or disclosure is required by law.
This is the code now. It's a creation of the commissioner of lobbying; it's not a statute. But she is charged with looking into breaches of the code as well as the act itself. So if a lobbyist gets this information somehow.... If the lobbyist pursued this information and got it, that's a little more culpable. If the lobbyist was just having his lunch one day and it landed in front of him, okay, he has not done anything wrong so far. But then you look at what he's doing with that information. So maybe there is something here that has to be examined by the commissioner of lobbying as to what these lobbyists did relative to this code.
The problem here, of course, is that it's like the whistleblower commissioner, and there is not a great track record of effective policing of lobbyists that I am aware of by the commissioner of lobbying. But this committee might meet with the commissioner of lobbying and might call upon the commissioner to examine this matter and express an interest in receiving a report delivered to the House by her on this matter, and in due course take up the matter at that point.