Santos, Menendez, Trump: The ethics mirage in Washington

Finding consistent ethical standards in Washington these days is like hunting truffles out of season.

The Supreme Court finally adopted an ethics code last month after it was revealed that some justices got a lot of the good stuff — cruises on superyachts, rides on private planes and vacations in hunting lodges — that hadn’t been reported. The problem is there is no enforcement mechanism if some of the justices decide not to play by the rules. So, we wonder, what good is the code anyway?

When the Democratic majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee decided to take a deep dive into the money by slapping a subpoena on Dallas-based billionaire conservative donor Harlan Crow — who treated Justice Clarence Thomas to private school tuition for his grand-nephew, and a renovated home for his mother — the two Texas Republican senators, Cornyn and Cruz, stormed out of the hearing.

And, while we are on the Senate, there is the case of Bob Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, who is the subject of federal indictment charging him with conspiracy, bribery, extortion, as well as the doozer, acting as an undisclosed agent of Egypt while chairman of the august Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The indictment details over $480,000 in cash stuffed in envelopes seized from the good senator’s home, together with gold bars formerly owned by a Menendez donor named in the indictment.

Expel Menendez from the Senate? Demand his resignation? Not on your life. In September, after the initial indictment came down, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made the irrelevant observation that: “Menendez has a right to due process and a fair trial.” Menendez rightly decided to step down temporarily from his position as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, as Schumer put it, “until the matter has been resolved.”

Resolved? The evidence detailed in the indictment is as damning as it is overwhelming. In October, after the superseding indictment charged Menendez with being an unregistered Egyptian agent, Schumer said that he has had some “serious discussions” with Menendez. What could he have said other than “get a good lawyer”? But call for his resignation from the Senate? Never!

Then there is the case of the mendacious GOP Representative of New York’s Third District, George Santos. Santos was just expelled from the House for getting elected by fabricating much of his professional and personal history, lying about his campaign finances and defrauding donors.

One of the defrauded donors was his own colleague, Rep. Max Miller, Republican of Ohio. Santos had apparently charged Miller’s personal credit card, as well as that of Miller’s mother, for contribution amounts exceeding legal limits — without authorization. Miller claimed that he and his mother spent thousands in fees to get the charges reversed, and that he knew 400 other people who were in the same boat.

The House Ethics Committee found that Santos had used the campaign funds for personal expenses, including subscriptions to X-rated platforms and lavish trips. After two previous attempts to oust him, the Congress finally, by a two-thirds vote, did its duty.

This is not the end of the line for Santos. He is facing a 23-count federal indictment charging him with having laundered campaign money and defrauded donors. In being expelled, Santos lost what little leverage he might have had with his prosecutors; one wonders why he didn’t make a deal earlier to resign in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

Santos became the sixth representative ever to be expelled from the House. Three of his illustrious predecessors were members of the Confederacy, and the other two had been convicted of felonies. So now we have a new standard in Congress. If your conduct is bad enough on its face, you can be expelled even if you have not had your day in court and have never been convicted of anything. So why not Menendez? And what are we going to do about Donald Trump?

Every member of the House GOP leadership, from Speaker Mike Johnson to Steve Scalise to Elise Stefanik, voted to keep Santos in the chamber.

Stefanik tweeted: “No Member of Congress has ever been expelled without a conviction; this is a dangerous precedent and I am voting no based upon my concerns regarding due process.” Republicans are right to be concerned about the Santos expulsion. The new standard could be readily applied to Donald Trump.

So if it doesn’t take a conviction to turn your back on a public official, and an indictment is sufficient, what will the country do about the 91 felony charges brought against Trump in four jurisdictions, state and federal?

Rep. Jamie Raskin gets it. He said the Santos outcome posed “a very serious problem” for the Republican Party. “They have proclaimed a new standard of ethics, and yet they all continue to stand by Donald Trump, who lied about having won the presidential election … and then proceeded to try to overthrow” the election “and violate our constitutional order.”

One would think that the charges against Trump are sufficiently serious and well-grounded to warrant his disqualification. If you don’t think he should be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment for engaging in an insurrection on January 6, at least his opponents in the Republican primary should be critical of his conduct. But no. Deafening silence from the leading opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Vivek Ramaswamy vows, if elected, to pardon Trump “on Day One.” Except for Chris Christie, they all have drunk the Kool-Aid.

No proposition is too far-fetched for Trump. He recently lied about and threatened the wife of the New York judge overseeing his civil fraud trial.

So now if we are truly moving towards new ethical standards in Washington, let’s apply them consistently and fairly to Donald Trump and all the others under ethical cloud. Rules should apply to all, not just one. As Justice Frankfurter stressed: “If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.”

James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.