Prosecutors call it manifestation of intent.
This is behavior that conveys awareness of willful or deliberate misconduct. In a nutshell, you knew what you were doing was wrong - and you went ahead and did it anyway.
Keep that thought in mind as you consider the conduct of Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.
For almost two decades, Crapo has paid his wife, Susan, a total of almost $200,000 from the contributions his political action committee, Freedom Fund, collects.
It was generous.
So generous in fact that - as the Idaho Statesman's Cynthia Sewell noted - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ranked Crapo's compensation for his wife as the third highest in the Senate in 2008 and the seventh in 2014.
It was frowned upon.
So frowned upon on that even in a jaded Capitol Hill, the House tried to outlaw the practice of transferring cash from contributors into the family household budget.
It was rare.
So rare that at one point, the watchdog group Public Citizen counted as few as 20 of the 535 House and Senate members who placed family members on campaign payrolls. USA Today put the number a smidge higher at 32.
Among them was Congressman Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who for years dismissed scrutiny and continued to pay his wife, Rebecca, about $2,000 a month for 20 hours of work keeping the campaign books.
That's right. Of the handful of House and Senate members who bend the rules, two of them represent the Gem State.
Quipped Public Citizen's government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman: "It's as if the Idaho congressional delegation seems to have a culture of entitlement."
Entitlement goes only so far.
Earlier this year, Labrador left the safety of his House district and gambled on winning the GOP nomination for governor. As he launched that campaign, Labrador decided to sever Rebecca from the campaign payroll.
Crapo's shop liked to say they got "fair market value" from Susan Crapo's work. But as the senator's 2016 re-election campaign approached, he faced a couple of hiccups.
There was his Dec. 23, 2012, arrest for drunken driving outside Washington, D.C.
The following summer, Crapo disclosed that a young aide involved with his 2010 campaign had lost $250,000 worth of contributions investing in Nevada real estate.
Which would explain why in 2015, Freedom Fund and Susan Crapo all but parted ways.
The PAC paid her a paltry $965.73 in 2015. The following year, she got $381.
Two months after Crapo won 66.1 percent of the vote against Democrat Jerry Sturgill, Susan Crapo picked up $17,311 - covering work on the campaign for the prior two years.
"The campaign paid the invoices for the work when the invoices were received, which was in January 2017," Crapo's office told Sewell.
That might fly in Idaho, where voters have turned a blind eye to Republican transgressions large and small.
The Campaign for Accountability is not so gullible. It has filed an ethics complaint against the Idaho Republican.
Crapo is becoming a familiar topic for this watchdog group, which blew the whistle on his cushy arrangement with Capitol Hill lobbyist Vicki Hart. Crapo's campaign and PAC used Hart's condo - the same one Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt rented at $50 a night - 81 times.
But ask yourself: If Crapo believed there was nothing wrong with buying groceries and paying the mortgage by dipping into a political warchest, why did he delay paying his wife until he was safely re-elected? - M.T.
