The US House or US Senate is certainly not required to wait for all court activity to expire prior to dealing with an ethics complaint for one of its members. There are numerous precidents for same. Many, many pending cases come before the House while still pending in court. Ask Enron execs. Perhaps the "pending court case" excuse was used but, in my view, it was ill-advised to hold up hearings until seven years after this clear violation of member trust and federal law. Recall that McDermott never has denied giving this tape/transcript of private phone conversations of House leadership to the media. You or I would have been in front of a judge within days or weeks, not years on a similar violation.
By the way, how come the DemocRAT activists who originally recorded these conversations (with sophisticated electronic surveilance equipment) have never been held accountable? Their excuse was that they just happened upon these conversations and began taping. Ha. There was something much more sinister in all of this and it was probably planned all along to record these private phone conversations of the US Congressional leadership....
I didn't say they were required to, I said that they waited, and that I thought it was reasonable. I still do. The House and Senate have no business meddling in matters currently before the bar.