Panel Accused Of Shielding Gingrich Mcdermott Says Ethics Charges Are Being ‘Buried’ By Committee

The senior Democrat on the House ethics committee Friday accused the Republicans who control it of burying charges against Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington state said the investigating subcommittee, which has an outside counsel’s preliminary report on the matter, and the full committee “are not serious about bringing it to a resolution.” If they were, he said, they would have called meetings frequently enough to settle the matter.

Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, R-Conn., who heads the committee, responded by saying that Democrats like McDermott who proposed deadlines were guilty of “political interference with the work of the ethics committee.” She maintained that “this has been a workhorse committee.”

Rep. Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., who heads the investigating subcommittee, said he did not understand why McDermott was excited. He said the committee could function until the 104th Congress ends its term next Jan. 3.

In mid-August the outside counsel, James M. Cole, gave the subcommittee a preliminary report on his investigation of charges, filed in September 1994, that Gingrich had violated tax laws and misused thousands of dollars in tax-exempt foundation money, ostensibly raised to finance a college course, for political purposes.

McDermott said he had urged Johnson to appoint an outside counsel in January 1995. “I said: ‘You can get this thing out of the election cycle. You should have this thing resolved by the end of this year, because it’s not going to go away. It’s not going to evaporate. These kinds of issues never evaporate. They have to be dealt with.”’

But she did not take his advice, and Cole was not hired until a year later. “This committee has operated as though there was no clock, there was no time,” McDermott said. “When you have a five-five split, you can always stall.” The committee has five Democrats and five Republicans, and any decision requires six votes.

“Essentially, we are now up against the end of the session with no way to resolve this thing, and it is going to be buried,” he said. “I don’t believe that the subcommittee will bring out the report. It’s going to be buried.”

McDermott then said, “You can only come to one of two conclusions: the majority deliberately stalled for over a year, or they are inept in dealing with serious charges against their leader.”

Asked which of those conclusions he had reached, he said: “It’s very hard for me to tell. But I think there is pretty good evidence that this is being delayed deliberately.”

McDermott said that if the subcommittee did not agree to proceed on charges or agree they should be dismissed next week, it should release Cole’s preliminary report.

But he added: “I have no idea what is in the report of the special counsel. I have no idea what he proposes, what he says.”