Ethics complaint filed against Rep. Richardson

A government watchdog group asked for a congressional investigation into Rep. Laura Richardson’s (D-Calif.) controversial mortgage one day after House Democratic and Republican leaders said that could be a possibility.
 
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which last week called Richardson a “deadbeat congresswoman,” wants the House ethics committee to look into whether Richardson received inappropriate help — in the form of a gift — from her mortgage lender, failed to properly disclose a heavily indebted mortgage on her financial disclosure statement, and engaged in conduct that does not reflect creditably on the House by loaning her campaign money at a time when she was defaulting on multiple mortgages.

{mosads}Richardson has come under growing scrutiny for a home she purchased in 2007 with a no-money-down sub-prime loan that was sold at auction last month after it fell into foreclosure. She had received the loan after defaulting on two other homes.

On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) both said through spokesmen that they believed Richardson’s financial woes could warrant official congressional inquiry, including an ethics investigation.

Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered Richardson a warning of her own, saying, “Every member of Congress is responsible for living up to the highest ethical standard, to having the fullest disclosure of his or her assets, as is required by law.”

Richardson, who by the end of 2007 owed more on her Sacramento home mortgage than she paid for it in January of that year, left the mortgage — and all of her other debts — off her initial financial disclosure statement.

CREW said it wants Richardson’s financial disclosure investigated.

The liberal ethics group also wants the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to investigate whether Richardson received favorable treatment from lenders, given that she secured a $535,000 mortgage from Washington Mutual despite having defaulted on two others.

And CREW asked for a probe of whether Washington Mutual’s recent move to rescind the Sacramento home’s sale at auction constituted a loan that would fall under the House gift ban, as well as an investigation into how Richardson was able to loan her congressional campaign $77,500 at a time when she was defaulting on multiple home payments.

“By failing to pay her debts, filing incorrect financial disclosure forms and funneling money that should have gone to pay her mortgage and property taxes to her congressional campaign, Rep. Richardson has signaled that legal and financial obligations can be ignored in the pursuit of political power,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a statement. “Richardson not only has shown exceedingly poor judgment, she has violated House ethics rules. She is unfit to be an elected official, at any level.”