To my great surprise, a couple of the Republicans named to the House Ethics Committee earlier this year — chosen in part for their allegiance to Tom DeLay — will not be part of the upcoming investigation into the Majority Leader’s ethical transgressions.
Two of the five Republicans on the House ethics committee will not participate in any investigation of potentially improper travel by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the panel’s chairman said Wednesday.
Lamar Smith of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma contributed to DeLay’s legal defense fund last year, creating what outside ethics experts regarded as a conflict of interest.
Those contributions “raise doubts — however unwarranted — about whether those members would be able to judge fairly allegations of impropriety against Mr. DeLay,” committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said in a statement.
Too often these days the obvious and appropriate path is ignored, but this was the only reasonable call to make. Cole donated $5,000 to DeLay’s Legal Defense Trust in order to help the Majority Leader address the controversies swirling around him, while Smith gave the fund a total of $10,000 in donations. To have these two reviewing complaints against DeLay after contributing to his defense just didn’t make any sense.
And though I really don’t want to sound greedy here, there’s at least one more member of the committee who should follow Smith’s and Cole’s lead.
Campaign watchdog groups said on Friday that it would be inappropriate for Representative Melissa A. Hart to oversee any potential inquiry of the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, because she had received $15,000 from his political action committee and held a fund-raiser at a restaurant owned by a Republican lobbyist at the center of a growing corruption scandal.
Ms. Hart, a Pennsylvania Republican, has been named by the House ethics committee chairman to look into accusations about Mr. DeLay, who is under scrutiny for overseas trips organized by Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist. Mr. Abramoff’s far-reaching political work is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation. Campaign records filed with the Federal Election Commission show that Ms. Hart held a fund-raising event at his restaurant, Signatures, in Washington.
With Hart taking the lead on the DeLay probe, her conclusions will be suspect in light of her connections. She didn’t contribute directly to DeLay’s defense fund, but the connections to DeLay and Abramoff at least raise questions about her objectivity.
By the way, when Ethics Committee members recuse themselves from an inquiry, the Speaker chooses temporary fill-ins from the larger caucus. It’ll be interesting to see who Hastert taps to replace Smith and Cole.