Congress just committed a 'New Years Eve ethics massacre': watchdog
Daniel Schuman, the executive director of the American Governance Institute and a former legislative attorney for the Congressional Research Service, is flagging a new change being enacted by the House Ethics Committee that he says amounts to a "New Year's Eve ethics massacre."
Writing on his Substack page, Schuman accuses both Republicans and Democrats on the committee of passing rule changes that make corruption easier to get away with.
"Under the cover of the New Years' holiday, Ethics Committee Democrats and Republicans pulled a fast one, legalizing a money laundry so blatantly corrupt it would embarrass Walter White," Schuman contends. "They also made many other allegations of wrongdoing disappear."
Among other things, wrote Schuman, the committee narrowed a restrictions on using campaign donations so that only uses that violate federal law are banned.
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As if that weren't enough, Schuman said the committee voted to make it harder to prove that a member violated even these narrower rules.
"The Ethics Committee declared guidance from the Federal Election Committee with respect to conversion of funds are 'ambiguous' and provide for 'significant gray areas,'" he writes. "Accordingly, the Ethics Committee decided it would not punish Members who converted those funds unless there was evidence 'that any Member intentionally misused campaign funds for their personal benefit.'"
Later in his piece, Schuman took a broader critique of the way the House Ethics Committee selectively pushes investigations, lending some credence to former Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R-FL) claims that he was selectively targeted.
"[Gaetz] engaged in wildly inappropriate behavior," he writes. "But it also appears that he was the target of (Republican) leaks because he arose the ire of then-Speaker McCarthy, and that Republicans withdrew their protection of him so that the ethics process could go forward. If we know this is what has happened, what else is happening? Why did these investigations drag on for more than a thousand days?"