Rosie O'Donnell faces backlash after offering to pay GOP senators

Updated

Rosie O’Donnell offered to pay Republican Senators millions if they voted against the tax cuts bill — and her critics are calling it bribery.

The fiery comedian on Tuesday night promised to give a cool $2 million a piece to Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) if they voted against the reforms.

“no s--t,” she said in a tweet, sent about the same time Senators voted to slash rates for corporations and the wealthiest earners.

“2 million

cash

each,” her tweet continued.

The “Harriet the Spy” actress is now under fire on social media and in conservative media for making the offer.

RELATED: Rosie O'Donnell reignites feud with Donald Trump

Collins and Flake both voted in favor of the cuts, which are expected to be approved by the House on Wednesday.

Either way, the hot-tempered funny woman might’ve landed herself in hot water with the law.

O’Donnell followed up her first tweet with a second tailored for Collins — who at times was skeptical of supporting the cuts.

“susan - 2 million dollars cash

call if u want to negotiate,” she wrote in her follow up.

“i swear,” she wrote in another tweet, “i will write them a check.”

“i will HAPPILY pay any GOP senator 2 million dollars

to vote NO,” she said in another. “they have been paid

obviously.”

No Republican senator voted against the bill.

Some irate with the social media post said it violates the law for bribery of a federal official.

The rule says anyone who “directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official” in exchange for an action, such as a vote.

It’s not immediately clear if O’Donnell’s tweets violated the bribery statute.

But Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor, said the word “corruptly” is the strongest one in the rule, which O’Donnell didn’t display in the tweets.

“It’s political commentary,” Roiphe, a former prosecutor, told the Daily News. “What she’s trying to do is show these people had already been bought off.”

FBI officials neither confirm nor deny investigations.

Most prosecutors would use their discretion, Roiphe said, look at the context of the political situation and not even interview O’Donnell.

“It all rides on what her intent was in writing that tweet,” she told the News. And trying to buy influence isn’t “the point of this whole string of these tweets. What she’s trying to do is fake-offer a bribe to point out that they’ve already been politically been bought.”

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