February 16, 2005

The Honorable Doc Hastings, Chairman Committee on Standards of Official Conduct House of Representatives HT-2, The Capitol Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Hastings:

In recent weeks, a series of steps have been taken by the House Republican leadership which have created the clear public perception that the ethics enforcement process is being shut down in the House. This included an apparent purge of three Republican members from the House Ethics Committee for simply doing their jobs last year and holding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay accountable for multiple ethics improprieties.

Democracy 21 is writing to you, and to the other members of the House Ethics Committee, to strongly urge you to reject any such efforts to shut down ethics enforcement and to carry out your institutional responsibilities to ensure that House Members comply with House ethics rules and standards.

We also strongly urge you and the other members of the Committee to move quickly to place on the Ethics Committee agenda for this Congress all of the ethics inquiries that were pending before the Committee when Congress adjourned last year. Since the House is not a continuing body, action is required by the Ethics Committee to re-place these ethics matters on its agenda for the 109th Congress.

We also strongly urge you and the other members of the Committee to add to the Ethics Committee agenda an investigation into whether House Members and staff have received financial favors from Washington lobbyist in violation of House ethics rules.

I am enclosing and resubmitting to the Ethics Committee the letter we sent on December 28, 2004 to then Ethics Committee Chairman Joel Hefley and Ranking Democratic Member Alan Mollahan. We again call on the Ethics Committee to promptly undertake an investigation of the Abramoff matter detailed in the letter.

As you know, and as the December 28th letter points out, Ethics Committee Rule 18 makes clear, “Notwithstanding the absence of a filed complaint, the Committee may consider 2 any information in its possession indicating that a Member…may have committed a violation of the Code of Official Conduct….”

The December 28th letter also stated:

According to a December 26, 2004 article in , lobbyist Abramoff has made available to House Members and staff seats in luxury skyboxes at FedEx Field, MCI Center and Camden Yards. The skyboxes reportedly cost Abramoff approximately $1 million per year and were financed by funds provided by his Indian tribal clients. According to The Post article, House members who may have benefited from Mr. Abramoff’s largesse include Representatives John Doolittle, J.D. Hayworth, Don Young, Tom DeLay and Robert Ney.

According to The Washington Post article, "Abramoff also wined and dined politicians and their aides at Signatures, his expensive Pennsylvania Avenue restaurant, billing tribal clients for hundreds of thousands of dollars in meals there...."

Democracy 21 strongly urges the House Ethics Committee to promptly undertake a thorough investigation to determine if House Members and staff have received financial benefits from Abramoff in violation of House ethics rules.

The deep public concerns about whether the Ethics Committee will do its job in this Congress were only heightened by House Speaker Hastert’s recent decision to replace three of the five Republicans on the Committee in what publicly appeared to be retribution for their roles in holding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay accountable last year for his ethics improprieties in three different instances.

The former Chairman of the Ethics Committee, Representative Joel Hefley, for example, stated in a February 3rd article in The Washington Post, “There is ‘a bad perception out there that there was a purge in the committee and that people were put in that would protect our side of the aisle better than I did.’” According to the Post article, Hefley further stated, “Nobody should be there to protect anybody. They should be there to protect the integrity of the institution.”

Republican Representative Kenny Hulshof said about his removal from the Ethics Committee by Speaker Hastert in a February 4th article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"I believe the decision was a direct result of our work in the last session, particularly my chairing the investigative subcommittee....I strongly believe that my actions...were in keeping with the best traditions of the U.S. House of Representatives. I wholeheartedly stand behind my subcommittee's findings and do not apologize for my actions."

Given these reactions from your former colleagues on the Committee, and the public sense that House Republican leaders have sent the message to shut down ethics enforcement, it should not be surprising to you and your Republican colleagues on the Committee that there 3 is deep public skepticism about whether the Republican Members on the Committee will properly fulfill their enforcement responsibilities in this Congress.

This is particularly true with regard to the still unresolved ethics issues concerning Majority Leader DeLay, in light of the fact that Speaker Hastert has chosen to appoint to the Ethics Committee two new Republican Members who have each made substantial contributions to DeLay’s legal defense fund during the past seven months.

There were a number of ethics matters pending at the House Ethics Committee when Congress adjourned last year. The matters that need to be re-placed on the Ethics Committee agenda for this Congress include the following items.

Based on the recommendation of its Chairman and the Ranking Democratic Member, the Ethics Committee last year deferred acting on one count of a complaint brought against Representative DeLay, pending further developments in a criminal matter being investigated in concerning Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), a PAC associated with Representative DeLay.

Three individuals who were involved with TRMPAC have been indicted in Texas and are awaiting trial. In a memorandum to the Committee released on October 6, 2004, Chairman Hefley and Ranking Democrat Mollohan said:

[O]ur recommendation is that the Committee defer action on Count II pending further action in both the cases that were initiated by the recent indictments and in the District Attorney’s investigation. If the Committee concurs that action on Count II should be deferred, Committee staff will monitor the Travis County proceedings. When circumstances arise indicating that the deferral should end, the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member will make appropriate recommendations for action on Count II to the Committee.

Memorandum to the Members of the Committee from Joel Hefley, Chairman, and Alan B. Mollohan, Ranking Minority Member re: Recommendations for disposition of the complaint filed against Representative DeLay (Emphasis added).

This matter needs to be re-placed on the Ethics Committee agenda for this Congress for “appropriate recommendations” to be made to the Committee “when circumstances arise indicating that the deferral should end.”

Since new Members have been appointed to serve on the Ethics Committee in this Congress, we are enclosing a report prepared by Democracy 21 that details Representative DeLay’s association and involvement with TRMPAC. The report also provides summary information on the five separate instances in which the Ethics Committee has admonished and rebuked DeLay for ethics improprieties.

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According to published reports, another inquiry underway in the last Congress involved Representative Bob Ney (R-OH), Chairman of the House Administration Committee, and his dealings with Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. According to an article about this matter in The Hill on December 15, 2004:

[T]he powerful chairman of the House Administration Committee, has attracted the attention of the House ethics committee for his dealings with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, said congressional and lobbying sources. The ethics panel has been working for the past month to glean more information on Ney’s involvement with Abramoff, which was first disclosed at a Senate hearing Nov. 17.

According to an article in The Hill that ran the day after the November 17th hearing held by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, testimony and statements released at the hearing showed that “House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney (R-) was the principle congressional supporter of a plan devised by lobbyist Jack Abramoff to reopen a tribal casino that he and public relations consultant had previously helped to close.”

The Ney-Abramoff matter needs to be re-placed on the Ethics Committee agenda for this Congress.

On April 1, 2004, reported that the Ethics Committee began an informal investigation into allegations that Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) had used his office to aid his daughter’s public relations firm. The investigation was prompted by a story in The that reported Weldon’s daughter used her father’s contacts to help obtain contracts worth nearly $1 million per year for her lobbying to represent several foreign clients.

The Weldon matter needs to be re-placed on the Ethics Committee agenda for this Congress.

On April 8, 2004, Roll Call reported that the Ethics Committee had begun an informal probe into whether Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and his aides improperly conducted partisan political activities out of his Detroit office during 2002 and 2003. According to the Roll Call article, Conyers’ aides, during this period, reportedly worked on a state gubernatorial campaign, a number of city and county races, a California ballot proposal and the unsuccessful campaign of Conyers’ wife for a state Senate seat.

The Conyers matter needs to be re-placed on the Ethics Committee agenda for this Congress.

On November 16, 2004, Representative David Hobson (R-OH) filed a complaint against Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) charging that Representative McDermott had violated House ethics rules and standards in handing over a tape of an illegally intercepted phone conversation to the press in January 1997. The taped conversation related to proceedings before the Ethics Committee involving Representative Newt Gingrich.

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The McDermott matter needs to be re-placed on the Ethics Committee agenda for this Congress.

All of the pending ethics matters need to be re-placed on the Ethics Committee agenda for the 109th Congress. The Committee should investigate these matters, report its findings to the public, and take appropriate action to hold House Members and staff accountable for any violations of ethics rules and standards that may have occurred.

In writing about the steps taken in the House on ethics matters, the Los Angeles Times wrote in a January 5, 2005 editorial, “House Republicans are demonstrating a sad fact of life in Washington: Ethics are seen as something you practice when you're out of power….Both parties should realize that the voters don't much like corrupt politicians, regardless of which side is in the majority.”

The New York Times wrote in a February 5th editorial, “House Republican leaders continue to try to hobble embarrassing ethics investigations of the majority leader, Tom DeLay….Mr. DeLay may not be a criminal target in Texas, as he maintains, but the hobbling of the committee seems designed to inoculate him against further peer reviews."

The Washington Post wrote in a February 5th editorial, “We have, it seems, once again underestimated the speaker of the House and the lengths to which he is willing to go to neuter the ethics process and protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)….It will be incumbent on [the new Republican members], and on the panel's new chair, to demonstrate their diligence and independence despite the intense political pressure they are likely to face."

The Ethics Committee should move quickly to re-place on the Committee agenda the matters involving Majority Leader DeLay, Representative Ney, Representative Conyers, Representative Weldon and Representative McDermott, and to place on the Committee agenda the matter involving Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and House Members and staff that is described in our enclosed December 28th letter.

The House Ethics Committee faces a threshold credibility test of whether it has, in effect, been put out of the enforcement business by the ethics rules changes and the changes in Committee membership carried out by the House Republican leadership. This fundamental question will be answered for the public by how the Committee performs in dealing with the ethics matters discussed above and with other ethics matters that may arise in the 109th Congress.

Sincerely,

Fred Wertheimer President

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