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office of congressional ethics
GOP Destruction of House Ethics Committee Tells You Everything You Need to Know
Free from any oversight or accountability for breaking House ethics rules, what comes next for this distinguished Republican-controlled body?
Jan 13, 2023
They came to Washington last week ready to represent the constituents who had given them the honor of serving in Congress. They were 39 freshman Republican House Members.
Harsh reality quickly set in.
Last week, they sat around as a Greek chorus while 20 extremist Republicans forced 15 ballots – the most since 1859 – before permitting Kevin McCarthy to be elected House Speaker. In the process the extremists drained away much of the Speaker’s powers.
Following this debacle, as a first order of business on Monday, the newbies were presented with the opportunity to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), an effective House Office that has been key for more than a decade to House ethics rules being enforced.
Without presenting any case against OCE—because there is none—House Republicans, including the 39 Republican freshmen, acted to cripple the agency for only one apparent reason: to enable House Republicans to take actions, free from any oversight or accountability for breaking House ethics rules.
I am confident in saying that none of those 39 Republican freshmen campaigned on a platform of gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics. But that didn’t stop them from voting to trash the House ethics rules by gutting the House office that is essential to making the House ethics rules work.
As a result, the 39 new Republican House Members quickly earned their place in the House Hall of Shame.
Mr. Smith did not come to Washington with this class of House Republican freshmen.
The most infamous member of this class is Rep. George Santos of New York.
He ran and won as a complete fiction, lying about nearly every aspect of his life. Santos is facing multiple calls for House ethics investigations ( including one from Democracy 21), and federal and local law enforcement bodies are already investigating him.
While the House Ethics Committee will continue to have the power to determine whether ethics rules have been broken and to recommend sanctions, the Ethics Committee had been a burial ground for ethics complaints and investigations prior to the creation of the independent OCE in 2008.
If the OCE concluded the Ethics Committee should pursue an investigation, it put pressure on the Committee to do so. If the Committee failed to act, it knew that OCE’s report to the Committee would become public, putting further pressure on the Committee to take appropriate action.
OCE has done an effective job of preventing the Ethics Committee from deep-sixing ethics problems and has greatly improved ethics oversight and enforcement. And that is why the House Republicans gutted it.
While House Republicans were trashing ethics oversight, they were at the same time creating a “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” In reality, they are weaponizing the House to attack the Biden-led executive branch for purely partisan purposes.
Hypocrisy barely serves to describe these two actions. House Republicans want to investigate and ensure so-called “oversight and accountability” for the executive branch while eliminating effective oversight and accountability for themselves.
Furthermore, in true Orwellian fashion, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) will head the subcommittee to investigate the January 6th Committee and Justice Department investigators of the Trump coup attempt.
In 2016, Jordan led a spectacularly unsuccessful effort to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, one of the nation’s finest public servants. Jordan’s efforts were rejected by an overwhelming bipartisan House vote of 342-to-72. There was no evidence and no basis for impeaching Koskinen. But evidence is not something that matters to Jordan, as we also saw in his effort to deny the presidential election to Biden.
Jordan is about to embark on an irresponsible attack on the federal government in general and the Justice Department and FBI in particular. As an election denier and a serious participant in supporting Trump’s coup attempt, Jordan is riddled with conflicts of interest in leading this effort.
This subcommittee should not exist and Jordan certainly should not be serving on it.
The infamous two-year House Republican Benghazi investigation into Hillary Clinton ended in 2016 with a whimper, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Clinton.
We can expect that House Republicans will again wildly overreach in their partisan investigations that will end with a similar whimper.
This column first appeared in Wertheimer’s Political Report.
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'Disaster for Everyone Except Corrupt Politicians': House GOP Votes to Gut Ethics Office
"It's telling that the very first action of the incoming MAGA Republican-led House was to kneecap a bipartisan office that oversees congressional ethics."
Jan 10, 2023
In one of their first acts in the majority, House Republicans on Monday approved a rules package that will dramatically hinder the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body tasked with investigating complaints about sitting lawmakers.
The change came as a number of House Republicans—including newly elected Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.)—are facing growing scrutiny for alleged ethics violations that range from potentially running afoul of campaign finance laws to defying congressional subpoenas issued as part of the January 6 investigation.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) opposed the establishment of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) in 2008, and Republicans have repeatedly targeted the body in the years since its creation.
"It speaks volumes that House Republicans' first order of business after electing Kevin McCarthy as speaker is to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, making it easier for House members—including those complicit in the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election—to evade responsibility for misconduct," said Sean Eldridge, the founder and president of Stand Up America.
"This kind of self-serving behavior is why many Americans have lost faith in politics," Eldridge added. "McCarthy and his fellow MAGA Republicans have sent a clear message about their priorities and who is actually in charge in the new House: corrupt politicians."
The changes enacted by the House GOP on Monday impose an eight-year term limit on the eight members of the OCE, a change that will force out three of the four Democrats currently sitting on the board.
The new rules will also require OCE to hire all of its staff for the 118th Congress within a period of 30 days, a restriction that outside ethics watchdogs say "essentially limits any hiring for the office, including investigative staffers, to an impossibly brief period that would make it extremely difficult to rigorously assess candidates for these high-stakes jobs."
"Additionally," notes the Campaign Legal Center, "the 30-day hiring period applies to the entire 118th Congress, meaning that regardless of when a vacancy at the OCE occurs under this rule, the position cannot be filled."
Any new hires would require the approval of at least four OCE board members.
"This is about protecting their ethically-challenged members like fraudster George Santos or January 6 subpoena-defying Jim Jordan from accountability."
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) warned the changes enacted by House Republicans late Monday are "a disaster for everyone except corrupt politicians."
Kyle Herrig, president of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement that "this is about protecting their ethically-challenged members like fraudster George Santos or January 6 subpoena-defying Jim Jordan from accountability—or perhaps in anticipation of a new wave of corruption allegations and ethics violations from other MAGA extremists."
"It's telling that the very first action of the incoming MAGA Republican-led House was to kneecap a bipartisan office that oversees congressional ethics," said Herrig. "There's no good reason to make it easier for members to get away with ethics violations, which only invites problematic behavior. It sends a clear message that the MAGA House is more interested in sweeping any corruption amongst their ranks under the rug and performing political stunts against the Biden administration than they are doing anything constructive."
Santos, who has admitted to lying about numerous aspects of his background and is facing campaign finance complaints, celebrated the OCE changes as "fantastic" and called them "a good thing for transparency."
The Guardiannoted Monday that "as House Republicans moved to shield themselves from potential ethics investigations, they expanded their own investigative ability through the adoption of the rules package that allows for the creation of the special subcommittee to probe the Justice Department and intelligence agencies."
"The text of the resolution creating the subcommittee—scheduled for a vote on Tuesday—on 'the weaponization of the federal government' authorizes it to investigate any part of the federal government, including 'ongoing criminal investigations,' which Republicans have indicated could extend to probes against Trump," the newspaper reported.
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GOP Congressman Santos Hit With Four Campaign Finance and Ethics Complaints
"Santos has become a punchline in the national media, but these campaign finance violations are no joke," said one researcher at an ethics watchdog that filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against him.
Jan 09, 2023
Serial liar and Republican U.S. Congressman George Santos was the subject of four complaints filed Monday by advocacy groups alleging campaign finance and ethics violations, including an alleged scheme to hide the true and unknown source of over $700,000 in campaign funds.
End Citizens United filed separate complaints with the Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Election Commission (FEC), and Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) over Santos' (N.Y.) campaign spending, fundraising, and financial disclosures.
"All this takes place amid Santos' compulsive lying about his entire background—and a pattern of serious reporting problems the FEC already knows about, including excessive contributions."
The group said in a statement that its DOJ complaint "argues that Santos violated the Ethics in Government Act by not only filing a required financial disclosure almost a year late, but likely making several omissions related to various purported assets he holds."
The complaint with the OCE alleges Santos "violated federal law by soliciting campaign contributions in exchange for attending a swearing-in event on Capitol grounds," the statement added. The FEC filing "focuses on a purported $700,000 personal loan that he made to his campaign that the group says either came from a 'shell company' or was a prohibited corporate contribution."
The OCE complaint also alleges that nearly 40 payments of $199.99 made by the Santos campaign constitute an attempt to evade federal laws requiring receipts for campaign purchases over $200.
End Citizens United president Tiffany Muller toldInsider's Brian Metzger, who first reported the group's complaints, that "Congressman Santos has shown a blatant disregard for the law and has flagrantly brushed aside the transparency voters deserve from their elected officials."
\u201cExclu: @StopBigMoney is filing *three* complaints against GOP Rep. George Santos of New York today.\n\nOne w/ FEC, one with OCE, and one with DOJ.\n\nAdds to existing complaints from @CampaignLegal and @American_Bridge.\nhttps://t.co/2Oej5IawoQ\u201d— bryan metzger (@bryan metzger) 1673290653
"His actions are not only unethical, but illegal, and call into question his ability to serve," Muller added. "The FEC, the DOJ, and the OCE should immediately begin investigations and hold him accountable for his shady and unlawful actions."
Meanwhile, a similar complaint filed Monday by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) alleges that Santos concealed the sources of his 2022 campaign's funding, that he lied about campaign spending, and that he illegally used campaign funds for personal spending.
According to the complaint, Santos, campaign treasurer Nancy Marks, and unknown accomplices hatched a straw donor scheme to conceal the source of $705,000 that the congressman claimed to loan to his campaign. They are also accused of lying on FEC disclosure forms and other reporting violations; and of unlawfully spending campaign funds on personal expenses like the house Santos rented during his 2022 run.
"All this takes place amid Santos' compulsive lying about his entire background—and a pattern of serious reporting problems the FEC already knows about, including excessive contributions. The FEC sent the Santos campaign 20 letters in the 2022 cycle about these," CLC senior researcher Roger G. Wieand tweeted Monday.
\u201cGeorge Santos (@Santos4Congress) has lied about virtually every aspect of his life, and it appears he broke the law by lying about where he got $705k for his campaign, how his campaign spent funds, and more. Today, @CampaignLegal filed an @FEC complaint: https://t.co/wm3usnBbbF\u201d— Saurav Ghosh (@Saurav Ghosh) 1673280198
"We think that rather than Santos making overnight millions from a business he can't explain, he, and others unknown, engaged in a scheme to provide secret, illegal contributions to his campaign," Wieand continued.
"Santos has become a punchline in the national media, but these campaign finance violations are no joke," he added. "We think the people of New York's 3rd District deserve truth and transparency about where Santos' money came from and how it was spent. We're asking the FEC to investigate."
CLC senior vice president and legal director Adav Noti said in a statement:
George Santos has lied to voters about a lot of things, but while lying about your background might not be illegal, deceiving voters about your campaign's funding and spending is a serious violation of federal law. That is what we are asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate. As the agency responsible for enforcing America's campaign finance laws, the FEC owes it to the public to find out the truth about how George Santos raised and spent the money he used to run for public office, and to ensure accountability for Santos' illegal conduct.
The new complaints follow a January 3 OCE
filing by the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century requesting an investigation of Santos' alleged failure "to file timely, accurate, and complete financial disclosure reports," as well as the possibility "that he may have even falsified information on his disclosure report."
Monday's filings also came after a Republican New York prosecutor last month announced an investigation into Santos' "numerous fabrications and inconsistencies" involving his education, employment, and property ownership history as well as his racial and religious background.
As the complaint notes, "Santos is also wanted in Brazil for using stolen checks to make fraudulent purchases in 2008—a crime for which he was charged by Brazilian authorities and to which he reportedly confessed in 2010."
The barrage of ethics complaints against Santos comes as House Republicans—who now narrowly control the lower chamber under Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—plan to gut the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics.
\u201cIt's such a terrible sign for the kind of majority Republicans envision that they are starting by gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics in the rules package.\n\nAs George Santos' new office neighbor, I can think of at least one very bad reason why they'd want to do this.\u201d— Rep. Don Beyer (@Rep. Don Beyer) 1673292257
The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tweeted Monday; "We cannot stress this enough: Kevin McCarthy's plan to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics in the rules vote tonight would be a disaster for everyone except corrupt politicians."
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen also noted Monday that "McCarthy plans to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics TONIGHT."
"The same office that investigates any congressional wrongdoing," the group added. "The same office that would investigate George Santos and [former President Donald] Trump's cronies. Pay attention. This isn't a coincidence."
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