Filner probe could spawn endless ethics inquiries

Some ethics attorneys are warning that a House ethics committee decision to investigate misdemeanor assault charges against Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) sets a low legal bar for future ethics probes and could subject members’ private conduct to a historic level of scrutiny.
The panel announced Wednesday that it had voted to establish an investigative subcommittee to review a misdemeanor charge against Filner for his alleged assault of a United Airlines employee at Dulles airport on Aug. 19.

{mosads}Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), who chairs the ethics panel, and Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), the committee’s ranking member, announced the inquiry in a written statement. The panel will follow its usual practice of waiting to begin its probe until legal proceedings regarding the incident are completed, according to the statement. Earlier this month, the Loudoun County General District Court in Virginia served Filner with a summons to appear at an Oct. 2 court hearing.

Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) will chair the investigative subcommittee, and Rep. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) will be the ranking member. The other members of the subcommittee are Reps. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.).

Filner, who was on his way to Iraq at the time of the incident, has said he was tired that day and has called the charges “ridiculous.” His attorney, Justin Dillon, referred questions to his spokeswoman, Amy Pond, who did not return a call for comment.

 The investigation was triggered by a new House ethics rule that Democrats sponsored and passed in early June in the wake of Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.) indictment on 16 counts of bribery and corruption. The rule requires the ethics committee to either empanel an investigative subcommittee or review the allegations and submit a report to the House describing its reasons for not doing so “not later than 30 days” after a member is indicted or charged with a crime.

According to the statement by Jones and Hastings, the Loudoun County court charged Filner with misdemeanor assault and battery “on or about August 20, 2007.” A deputy clerk for Loudon County General District Court said Magistrate Robert Franchok Jr., issued a summons Aug. 19 at 9:39 p.m., the same day of the alleged offense.

The court was responding to a written complaint from Joanne Kay Kunkel, the United Airlines baggage worker. Kunkel maintains that the California lawmaker stormed into the United Airlines baggage claims office, attempted to enter a restricted area and repeatedly pushed her as she was trying to block him.

Republicans pointed to the apparent one-day discrepancy between the dates stated by the committee and by the court as evidence that Democrats initially hesitated to take action, suggesting that they were not living up to their pledge to run the most ethical House in history. Besides Filner and Jefferson, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) also has come under fire for possible ethics violations.

“This decision was almost a day late, and it’s definitely a dollar short,” one GOP leadership aide remarked. “The Democrats appoint an investigative subcommittee to investigate Filner, but not Murtha or Jefferson? That’s almost comical.”

While Jefferson is the only indicted member of the House right now, several prominent GOP members are under FBI investigation, such as Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, as well as Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.).

A senior Democratic aide said Republicans are desperate to paint Democrats with the same culture-of-corruption brush that helped the party win control of Congress, but they won’t be successful.

“The fact is, Democrats are following through on our pledge to take ethics in the House seriously and hold members accountable when appropriate, and this case is only more evidence of that,” the staffer said.

Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), the top Republican on the Rules Committee, lambasted the new rules change before it passed the House, arguing that it was quickly and poorly crafted and could spark an ethics investigation of a traffic ticket or an arrest at a protest. At the time, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) responded that the ethics committee would not investigate trivial matters.

But ethics attorneys argue that the Filner decision, coupled with the Senate ethics inquiry into Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-Idaho) guilty plea, shows that Congress has entered into a new era in which any minor legal violation could spur ethics committee action.

They argue that the “charged with a crime” language in the new House rule can apply to even the most minor violations, such as a disturbance of the peace complaint or a traffic violation.

“When you get pulled over for speeding, the office hands you a summons and you do one of two things,” said veteran ethics attorney Jan Baran. “You plead guilty and mail in your penalty or you appear in court to contest the charge.”

Whether Filner was actually “charged with a crime” is an issue of semantics, Baran said, noting that the ethics committee apparently believed he was charged because it launched the investigation.

Stan Brand, who is defending Craig in the Senate ethics investigation, said the House and Senate are opening a “Pandora’s box” with their ethics inquiries of Craig and Filner. Making matters worse is the fact that any individual now can submit a complaint to a court and have a good chance of sparking an ethics probe, he added.

“[Democrats and Republicans] are playing this issue out in the hinterlands about who is more ethical, and it’s going to backfire on them,” he said. “In many ways it already has. Pretty soon it’s going to be [the case that] spitting on the sidewalk is … an offense that the ethics committee has to investigate.”

Brand also said the ethics committee was now crossing the line into members’ private conduct, in contrast to its historical practice of investigating only criminal conduct related to official business — an argument he also made in a letter to the Senate Ethics Committee on behalf of Craig two weeks ago.

“This has risks and consequences on both sides of the aisle. Every petty offense, every misdemeanor, every trivial disturbance of the peace is going to be subject to some determination under House and Senate rules,” he said. “That’s legally ridiculous, inefficient and wrong.”