When Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-Idaho) team started letting reporters know late yesterday that the senator was reconsidering his resignation, there was some talk that Craig was floating a trial balloon, seeing what kind of reaction the rumors received.
As of this afternoon, this is no trial balloon; Craig is seriously trying to mount a comeback.
Lawyers for Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho delivered a letter to the Senate ethics committee today asking the committee to reject a complaint relating to his guilty plea in an airport sex sting operation. The move opens a potentially ugly battle between Mr. Craig and the Republican leadership, as Mr. Craig reconsiders his plans to resign from the Senate. […]
The lawyers, Stanley M. Brand and Andrew D. Herman of The Brand Group, wrote that there is no precedent for a Senate ethics review of “purely personal conduct unrelated to the performance of official Senate duties.”
Investigating such a complaint, they warned, would draw the Senate into “reviewing and adjudging a host of minor misdemeanors and transgressions” even if “minor or professionally irrelevant.” Mr. Craig has also hired lawyers to review the Minneapolis airport case, saying that he made a mistake pleading guilty and that he is, in fact, innocent.
Brand told the NYT that he doesn’t expect the GOP leadership to withdraw the ethics complaint, but rather, “I expect the committee, which is an evenly split committee, to look at the precedents and to dismiss the complaint.”
As he pursues this, Craig has to fight on a variety of fronts, but getting the Senate Ethics Committee to back off is apparently Job #1. As Michelle Cottle noted this morning, “[I]f he even thinks about staying, his miffed colleagues will plow ahead with the probe, resulting in a public parade of unsavory allegations to which Craig must respond in graphic detail. Does the senator really want to put his family through all that?”
No, he most certainly doesn’t. But the question now is whether there’s even any reason for the Ethics Committee to investigate Craig in the first place.
Take a look at this clip from TPM of Brand making the case on the Today show this morning:
Brand makes a couple of compelling points, including the assertion that Ethics Committee investigations have never targeted private misdemeanor cases (Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct). He also made some less compelling points, including the notion that Craig’s colleagues acted “before anyone knew anything” about the case (we’d all heard the police interview and read the police report by the time Republicans started calling for Craig’s resignation).
If Brand is right about the history, and the Ethics Committee has never, in 220 years, conducted an investigation of a senator for a private misdemeanor that has nothing to do with a member’s official duties, then the committee probably should throw the complaint out.
For what it’s worth, though, I doubt that will happen. The Republicans on the committee, who are probably anxious to see Craig go away and not come back, are unlikely to boot a complaint that helps their caucus. Moreover, they probably won’t rush to do anything — Craig gave himself a Sept. 30 deadline, and it’s hard to imagine senators rushing to resolve matters before that date.
Realistically, I don’t doubt for a moment that Craig was hitting on the undercover cop in the next stall in Minneapolis. It’s why he shouted “No!” when he saw the badge, and it’s why he panicked and pleaded guilty in the first place. After the news broke, his bizarre excuses and finger pointing were pathetic and desperate. Given what we know, Craig’s denials were not only wrong, but were also ridiculous.
That said, it’s apparently occurred to Craig that being a hypocritical liar who cruises in airport bathrooms isn’t enough to force him from the Senate. The actual, documented evidence against him is thin, and the Ethics Committee complaint seems to be meritless.
And on those areas, I think he has a point.