Posted on 11/14/2010 9:47:59 AM PST by jazusamo
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), whose House ethics trial is scheduled to begin tomorrow, used almost $400,000 in funds from his National Leadership PAC to pay legal bills to fend off corruption allegations. Rangel's ability to retain high-powered lawyers helped him delay the Ethics Committee action for more than two years, and push his trial past the election.
Rangel appears to have violated House rules. Members of Congress may use funds from their personal re-election committees for legal expenses related to their official actions. The National Leadership PAC is not Rangel's re-election committee but what is classified as a "leadership PAC," the purpose of which is make contributions to other candidates. Up to and during his tenure as Ways and Mean Committee chairman, Rangel distributed hundreds of thousands to his colleagues, many of whom donated the money to charity as Rangel became an embarrassment.
When he was not attacking NLPC during his August 11 speech on the House floor, Rangel complained that his legal expenses totaled two million. According to Federal Election Commission filings, Rangel paid $1.65 million to lawyers from his re-election fund, in addition to the money from his leadership PAC.
Most of the money went to the Zuckerman Spaeder law firm, but two payments of $100,000, one from the re-election fund and one from the leadership PAC, went to Washington lawyer Lanny Davis. Rangel retained Davis after NLPC exposed his failure to disclose, or pay taxes on, rental income from his Dominican Republic beach house. The relationship did not last long, probably because Rangel would not take Davis' advice. Davis is the author of a book titled Truth To Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself, with advice on how public figures should react to scandal.
From his re-election fund, Rangel also paid $174, 303 to Watkins, Meegan, Drury & Co., a firm that specializes in forensic accounting. Rangel announced that he would retain a forensic accountant in the wake of the beach house controversy that prompted a more far-reaching scrutiny of Rangel's finances. In August 2009, Rangel amended his financial disclosure forms to show hundreds of thousands in previously unreported assets and income.
The Ethics Committee must add Rangel's use of leadership PAC funds for his legal fees to the currently pending 13 counts announced on July 22. The Committee must also investigate our allegations of cronyism and corruption related to Rangel obtaining earmarks for a New York group called Alianza Dominicana (Spanish for Dominican Alliance). The allegations were contained in a Complaint we filed on August 10, 2010.
If the new Leadership doesn’t do something to get rid of this type of vermin in our House that preys on his constituents (who aren’t smart enough to understand what he did) there will be hell to pay.
Agreed...This is exactly why we need the Office of Congressional Ethics panel, they bring sunshine to cases like this when the House Ethics Committee overlooks ethics violations on both sides of the aisle.
Of course since Nancy was going to “drain the swamp” it’s been Democrats found in the swamp, and now the CBC and other Dems want to gut the OCE.
They should boot Charlie out, and hold a special election to fill his seat!
Of course, Charlie would win the special election easily!
A Repub would be hounded from office amid calls from the Demos and their propaganda arm, the “media”. Chuck will hunker down and wait for the “media” reports to die down (and they will!), and he’ll stay in office. Maybe some “crisis” will be manufactured to move him off the headlines (if the “media” even puts him there . . . ).
LOL! You couldn’t be any more correct.
Yep, the enemedia would be on a story like this with a Republican on a daily basis until they resigned, they’ve basically ignored this with Charlie.
He´d better hope his ¨trial¨ and sentencing is over before Christmas.
I think Zoe Lofgren is going to make sure it is.
This is another thing that really stinks. This has gone on for months and they stalled it til after the election, then she schedules the trial for the first day back for the House lame duck session.
You do know that Charlie's predecessor,Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., did the same thing: Booted out by Congress, then won the special election? (don't think he showed up to be sworn in, though. He waited until winning the next general election.)
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. c. 1969
Charlie did beat Powell's great-grandson in the last primary, iirc.
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