Lewis holds fast to approps seat

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) is holding tightly onto his Appropriations panel seat even though two House GOP members resigned committee assignments in the last week after the Department of Justice escalated its investigations of them.

FBI searches of the Oakton, Va., home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) and a business owned by Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) prompted the lawmakers to give up seats on the Appropriations panel and the Select Intelligence, Resources and Financial Services committees, respectively.

{mosads}The Department of Justice (DoJ) has spent more than a year looking into Lewis’s relationship with a lobbying firm and the millions of dollars in contracts its clients received from Congress. Lewis, the ranking member of the spending committee, has outlaid an estimated $900,000 on defense lawyers since the probe began, but the investigation has been quiet in recent months.  

Lewis spokesman Jim Specht said Lewis’s home has not been searched and that the California Republican has had no “direct contact” with DoJ officials. Other than a subpoena issued late last year seeking documents related to the investigation of Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) that now is targeting former CIA official Dusty Foggo and businessman Brent Wilkes, Lewis has received no letters, calls or other contact from the DoJ, Specht said. He added that Lewis’s defense lawyers voluntarily have reached out to the DoJ.

Specht said he did not know why, with the case so quiet, Lewis has spent so much on attorney fees, referring the question to Lewis’s lawyers. Barbara Comstock, Lewis’s spokeswoman on the legal matter, did not return a call for comment.  

The Wall Street Journal editorialized yesterday that the quick relinquishing of Doolittle’s and Renzi’s committee assignments was a sign that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders are taking ethics transgressions seriously. But the paper’s editorial writers questioned why the leaders hadn’t exerted similar pressure on other members, namely Lewis.

“Exhibit A is California Representative Jerry Lewis. Despite a federal probe into allegations that Mr. Lewis directed hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarked funds to his friends and political allies, he was nonetheless reappointed to Appropriations as Ranking Member,” the Journal opined.

Earlier this year, The Hill reported that Boehner and Lewis had discussed the DoJ investigation, and that the minority leader was considering Lewis “innocent until proven guilty.”

Yesterday, Specht said Lewis would take his cues on whether to resign his Appropriations post from Boehner, who hadn’t mentioned anything about it.  

When asked whether Lewis would keep the committee seat if the DOJ investigation escalates, Kennedy referred to a memo Boehner issued to the conference late last year that read: “Clear likelihood of serious transgressions will lead to suspension from important committee positions; guilt will lead to immediate and severe consequences.”