The sweeping complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee is already facing resistance from the committee’s chairman, before the panel even considers the merit of the charges.
With speculation growing over whether the House ethics committee will take up a complaint against Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), ethics Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) said his panel would have a difficult time investigating the allegations — a clear sign that Hefley is weighing whether his panel has the capability, or jurisdiction, to undertake such a probe.
While Hefley noted that the committee has made no final decision on how to handle the ethics complaint filed by Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas), he added that District Attorney Ronnie Earle of Travis County, Texas, is already looking into the activities of the DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority PAC.
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Practically speaking, Hefley added, Earle’s office has “much more resources than we do. They have more investigative capability than we do.”
This has “shameless dodge” written all over it.
First of all, the district attorney investigating DeLay’s corruption believes the Ethics Committee should proceed with its own inquiry and sees no reason that a parallel probe would interfere with his investigation.
But an official with Earle’s office gave the green light for the ethics committee to start its own TRMPAC probe.
Greg Cox, director of the public integrity unit for the Travis County District Attorney’s office, said he sees “no problem” if the ethics committee begins its own investigation.
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“I’m not that concerned with [the ethics committee] overlapping us,” said Cox. “We are looking at different things from a different perspective.”
Second of all, it’s not terribly unusual for the Ethics Committee to consider an issue even while criminal proceedings are underway.
Rep. Howard Berman (Calif.), who served as the top Democrat on the ethics committee during the Traficant case, pointed out that the ethics committee had in some instances initiated its own investigations even as a federal probe of a lawmaker was ongoing.
As an example, he cited the ethics panel’s investigation into several of the corruption charges leveled against former Rep. Jay Kim (Calif.). Kim was eventually convicted in mid-1997 on misdemeanor charges of illegally raising more than $237,000 during a campaign five years earlier.
And finally, even if we were to accept Hefley’s argument and allow the DA’s office to investigate the state issue, the ethics complaint against DeLay has three parts — only one of which deals with a campaign finance violation in Texas.
The ethics complaint filed by Bell includes three parts. In addition to questions over TRMPAC, the complaints accuse DeLay of trading legislative favors for corporate campaign donations from Westar Energy Corp., as well as misusing his office to intervene in the Texas redistricting fight last year.
If Rep. Hefley wants to argue that he’ll conduct a thorough, impartial investigation of the other two parts of the complaint, but he feels compelled to skip the state issue, fine. But if he uses the state angle to try and ignore the whole mess, he has no business on the House Ethics Committee.
Indeed, Hefley’s hesitancy, coupled by the generous donations DeLay has showered on the other GOP members of the committee, only reinforce the need for an independent investigator to consider DeLay’s wrongdoings.