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Ethics: Putting Politics on Ice
May 23, 2006
On Sunday, the FBI unsealed documents which allege that Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) accepted bribes to help iGate, a small technology company. Overall, "Mr. Jefferson and his family received more than $400,000 from iGate." During a search of Jefferson's home this summer, the FBI found $90,000 in cash in his freezer "concealed in $10,000 increments inside various frozen food containers and wrapped in aluminum foil." At a news conference yesterday, Congressman Jefferson denied any wrongdoing, refusing to discuss the facts but insisting "there are two sides to every story." The ethical cloud surrounding Rep. Jefferson — not to mention Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), among others — underscores the need to for an effective, bipartisan ethics process to root out corruption in Congress.
- Speaker Hastert should follow Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s lead and help break the ethical deadlock in the House. Leader Pelosi took a significant step towards breaking the ethical deadlock in the House when she called publicly for an ethics investigation of Jefferson, a member of her own caucus. Pelosi’s statement helped end "more than a year of partisan deadlock that blocked any inquiries" in the Ethics Committee, which subsequently launched an investigation of Jefferson, Rep. Bob Ney and the activities of former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA). Despite the massive ethical problems within his own caucus, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has not advocated any ethics investigations.
- The House Ethics Committee has a lot of catching up to do before it warrants any sort of credibility as a serious arbiter of ethics violations. The purpose of the committee is not simply to mirror "the activities of federal prosecutor," as noted in today’s Washington Post. Rather, it should explore the "numerous ethical issues, and potential ethical violations, that don't rise to the level of a prosecutable criminal offense but that nonetheless — in the catchall language of House ethics rules — fail to 'reflect creditably on the House.'" Only when we set a standard for conduct in Congress that rises above technical compliance with criminal law will the public regain confidence in the legislative branch. The Washington Post notes there has not been an ethics investigation into the numerous members entangled with former lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff.
- Members of Congress in both parties have raised some legitimate questions about the constitutionality of the FBI’s search of Congressman Jefferson’s office. The most controversial aspect of the FBI's inquiry was a "Saturday raid of Jefferson's quarters in the Rayburn House Office Building." It was believed to be "the first ever executed at an official Congressional office." Newt Gingrich said, "There is no excuse for the FBI for the first time in history searching a congressional office and apparently doing so in total regard of due process as it relates to the Legislative Branch." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Hastert also criticized the FBI's actions. Congressman Jefferson, Congressman Ney and others are accused of serious illegal acts, and the FBI has an obligation to thoroughly investigate these cases. But they should not use these bad apples as an excuse to conduct politically motivated “J. Edgar Hoover-like” searches of Congressional offices. It would be nice if officials like Senator Frist and Speaker Hastert got as exorcised about the administration’s violation of citizens’ privacy rights as it does about the possible violation of their own rights. Nevertheless, the administration should take care to answer the legitimate questions these officials have raised.
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