Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, who has survived multiple Republican attempts to oust him as Ways and Means Committee chairman, may be headed for more trouble on the ethics front. Of course the CBC sticks by Rangel as they did with Cold Cash Jefferson.
Not limited to just the CBC ...
The House ethics committee met privately Thursday and is expected to issue an announcement about its sprawling Rangel investigation later today, according to Democratic and GOP insiders. Several members of the committee -- including those on the special subcommittee investigating Rangel -- came and went from the ethics panel offices Thursday afternoon in the Capitol basement without commenting on the matter.
Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the panel, said the "full committee will be issuing a statement this afternoon." Bonner declined to give any details on that announcement.
Rangel said he has not heard from the ethics committee as of Thursday afternoon. "No, I haven't," he said.
It's unclear what the secretive ethics panel will say, but the committee has been conducting a wide-ranging probe of the veteran New York Democrat. The committee is looking into Rangel's use of rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem luxury building, his fundraising on behalf of the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College in New York, a tax provision for a million-dollar donor to the center and his failure to pay taxes on a vacation home in the Dominican Republic.
Rangel has also been pulled into a parallel investigation into lawmaker trips to the Caribbean. A special investigative subcommittee is looking into whether five members of the Congressional Black Caucus took trips in 2007 and 2008 paid for by the Carib News Foundation, and there are questions whether the trips were improperly paid for using corporate funds.
Rangel, 79, has denied any wrongdoing, but he recently submitted revised financial disclosure reports showing hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal assets that he had never previously declared. On Wednesday, he survived a Republican attempt to oust him from the Ways and Means Committee.
Several sources familiar with the Rangel probe believe the ethics committee will announce that it is again widening the investigation to include issues raised by those revised disclosure reports.
Reps. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) said they couldn't talk about it as they left a meeting of the ethics committee in the basement of the Capitol.
"You'll have to ask the chairman," Welch said.
But Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the ethics committee, brushed off reporter inquiries on Rangel as she left the meeting.
Just what we need, a leftist Welfare Queen chairing the committee.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other Democratic leaders have resisted GOP efforts to force Rangel to give up his gavel at the powerful Ways and Means Committee, arguing the ethics committee should be allowed to complete its work first.
If the ethics committee makes a major announcement on the Rangel case, however, it will be harder to hold off the Republican resolutions.