No sooner was Rangel censured than he ran into more ethics complaints. This time, that he misused funds from a PAC he controls by spending them on his ethics defense team.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/rangel_in_deeper_with_new_ethics_NN5qV3bXesmA99ZPPDytiO
The Federal Election Commission is investigating a complaint that Rep. Charles Rangel improperly used his National Leadership PAC to fund his legal defense on ethics charges for which he was censured Thursday, The Post has learned.
The FEC is acting on a complaint by the National Legal and Policy Center filed after The Post reported last month that Rangel paid nearly $400,000 from his PAC.
Lawmakers are only allowed to use money in their individual campaign funds for legal fees, or they can set up legal defense funds for such costs.
I guess the issue here is whether it's legal to break the law in order to defend oneself against an accusation that you broke a law.
Oh, and Maxine Waters isn't out of the woods, either.
In her case, her ethics trial was postponed after the ethics committee found "new documents" that impacted her case. Apparently, they show that Waters' participation in events may have been a bit different than she portrayed.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/19/house-ethics-committee-cancels-waters-case-new-documents-emerges/
The ethics trial of Rep. Maxine Waters was postponed Friday, as the House ethics committee found new documents connected to charges that she improperly tried to help a bank in which her husband owned stock.
Although few details of the "new documents" have been leaked, I have heard rumblings that the new documents show she and her office intervened far more than they claimed they did. We'll have to wait and see, of course.
And the ethics problems just keep on coming. Personally, I'm wondering how many violations they have to be found guilty of before the House votes to remove them from office?
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