"Republicans claim they want to 'drain the swamp,' but...Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress." - Nancy Pelosi
On Monday night, in what the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman Ornstein called “a shameful act,” House Republicans voted 119-74 to “gut House Office of Congressional Ethics.”
This was the House’s outside ethics watchdog, independent of the House, now placed under the oversight of the members it was supposed to watch.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see the problems with this. As Ornstein put it, “House Republicans say goodbye to ethics! Despicable move.” This is something even the inept and corrupt John Boehner never tried to do, despite a complaint filed in 2015 against 23 House Republicans for misusing taxpayer funds.
This was the work of Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and not, as you might suspect, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who opposed the move, as did House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
In the spirit of corruption pervading Trump’s New Order, the rank and file rebelled and in the spirit of swampy Trumpism, decided to put themselves above the law. There was no warning whatsoever this was coming.
Goodlatte claimed in a statement,
“It also improves upon due process rights for individuals under investigation, as well as witnesses called to testify. The (ethics office) has a serious and important role in the House, and this amendment does nothing to impede their work.”
The House Office of Congressional Ethics can no longer review violations of criminal law by House members but must refer them to the House Ethics Committee, which routinely ignores ethics complaints, or to the appropriate GOP-controlled federal law enforcement agency.
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