House ethics panel agrees to start probes
WASHINGTON – After 16 months of inactivity and partisan in-fighting, the House ethics committee Wednesday night launched investigations into bribery allegations against Reps. Robert Ney, R-Ohio, and William Jefferson, D-La., and a separate inquiry into the widening scandal surrounding former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif.
The committee would have ordered another investigation into the overseas trips of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, had the once powerful lawmaker not announced he will resign from the House on June 9.
The inquiries by the long dormant House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct – as the ethics panel is formally known – come after the Justice Department intensified corruption investigations of Ney and Jefferson, and after Cunningham pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes and was sent to prison.
But as those and other scandals were unfolding, the ethics committee sat on the sidelines, while Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for grinding the ethics process to a halt. Democrats said GOP leaders had changed the rules unfairly to thwart investigations that could have negative ramifications for the party. Republicans charged that the Democrats were dragging their feet on the committee’s reorganization to bolster their accusations of a cover-up.
That logjam was broken last month when Rep. Allan Mollohan, D-W.Va., the ranking Democrat on the committee, was forced to step down from the panel amid accusations that he used his congressional position to funnel money to his own home-state foundations, possibly enriching himself in the process.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., named a fellow Californian and veteran of the committee, Howard Berman, to take the top slot. Berman quickly joined with committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., to get the panel moving again.
The Cunningham inquiry could hold the most political significance, since it will look into activities that could snare lawmakers who so far have escaped official scrutiny. Cunningham confessed to accepting millions of dollars in bribes from two Southern California defense contractors, Mitchell J. Wade and Brent R. Wilkes.
The case took a new twist last month when Wade told prosecutors that Wilkes had an arrangement with a limousine company, which in turn had an arrangement with at least one escort service, one source said. Wade said limos would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and bring them to suites Wilkes maintained at the Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand in Washington. Federal investigators are probing whether other lawmakers also took part.
The committee’s announcements mark one more setback for Ney and Jefferson. Ney has been a primary target of the federal probe into the activities of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In four separate guilty pleas, Abramoff, former DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony C. Rudy, former DeLay press secretary Michael Scanlon, and former Ney chief of staff Neil G. Volz all said Ney had used his official position to grant favors to the Abramoff lobbying team in exchange for a stream of personal gifts, from a lavish golf trip to Scotland to the use of sky boxes and free meals.