After months of resistance and delays, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (aka the “House Ethics Committee”) will start hearings today into whether Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) was illegally offered a bribe on the House floor in November in exchange for his vote on Bush’s Medicare bill.
If the process proceeds as it’s supposed to, we won’t hear much of anything about what happens at the hearings. They’re strictly confidential — unless someone leaks something. I’ll let you know.
In the meantime, Smith wants absolutely nothing to do with his earlier, unequivocal statements. He sat down with the Detroit News yesterday for a detailed interview in which he insisted that he was not offered a bribe, despite saying the opposite just a couple of months ago.
Asked to explain the obvious inconsistencies, Smith simply said, “I’m going to leave this up to the ethics committee.”
To help the Ethics Committee along, here’s Smith’s flip in a nutshell:
Smith, yesterday:
Nobody mentioned any dollar amount. Members of Congress are really too smart to come up to you on the floor and say, “We’ll give you so many dollars for this.”
Smith, two months ago:
[T]he first offer was to give [Smith’s son] $100,000-plus for his campaign and endorsement by national leadership. And I said, “No, I’m gonna stick to my guns on what I think is right for the constituents in my district.”