The House ethics committee on Tuesday found Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., guilty of 11 violations of House rules for actions ranging from improperly using office stationery to abusing his influence in Congress to raise money.
Citing “clear and convincing evidence,” the eight-member, bipartisan panel unanimously ruled that Rangel, 80, was guilty of all but two of the 13 original charges against him.
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The panel was split on whether Rangel violated the House gift ban by accepting donations to a school named after him. The panel voted 7-1 against the charge that Rangel’s actions discredited the House.
“We have tried to act with fairness, led only by the fact of the law,” committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said in announcing the verdict. “And I believe that we have accomplished that mission.”
Rangel denounced the verdict, saying he was denied his due process rights and the time he needed to find a lawyer.
He also pointed to testimony at Monday’s hearing from ethics committee lawyer, Blake Chisam, who told lawmakers he believed Rangel’s actions amounted to sloppiness rather than corruption.
“From here forward, it is my hope that the full Ethics Committee will take into consideration the opinion of its chief counsel as well as the statement by Rep. Bobby Scott [D-Va.], a member of its investigatory subcommittee who said that any failings in my conduct were the result of “good faith mistakes” and were caused by “sloppy and careless recordkeeping, but were not criminal or corrupt,” Rangel said in statement.
The decision by the panel, reached after just a few hours of deliberations, brought a quick end to a two-year investigation that culminated in a brief but dramatic public hearing Monday. Rangel walked out of the hearing after the panel refused to delay the proceedings until he found a lawyer. He did not return.
The former chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee must now await a public hearing by the full committee on his punishment, which could range from a written admonishment or formal censure on the House floor, to something far more serious, including expulsion.
Rangel, who won his 21st term in his Harlem district on Nov. 2, is far more likely to receive a written admonishment from the committee or perhaps censure, in which the House would vote to formally rebuke Rangel. The last time a member was expelled was in 2002, when Jim Traficant, a Democrat, refused to resign after being sentenced to prison on corruption charges.
Rangel was found guilty of violating the solicitations and gift ban when he solicited donations to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Policy at the City College of New York. The panel charged that Rangel sought money from companies with interests in legislation pending in the Ways and Means Committee. Among other charges, he was found guilty of improperly leasing a rent-stabilized apartment in his district and failing to disclose on his taxes rental income from a vacation home in the Dominican Republic.
He was originally charged with 13 counts of misconduct, but the committee combined two of the charges.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declined to comment on the verdict.
Republicans, who lost the House majority in 2006 after Democrats accused them of corruption, had plenty to say.
“This decision is the nail in the coffin of what Nancy Pelosi promised would be the most ethical Congress in history,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the House GOP’s campaign arm.
