Maxine Waters says the Ethics committee violated its own rule

[pscot]

and her constitutional rights. Her lawyer, Stan Brand has asked that the committee's investigation be dismissed.

Ms. Waters made the request after learning of memos written late last year by the former ethics committee chief counsel that detailed unauthorized communications between the lead ethics committee lawyer handling the inquiry and Representative Jo Bonner, Republican of Alabama, who is now the committee chairman. The communications would have been inappropriate because they did not go through official channels, a violation of House rules


At issue is the fact that ethics committee lawyers realized last August that they had not sought e-mails from a private Yahoo account maintained by Mikael Moore, Ms. Waters’s chief of staff. Investigators suspected the e-mails might contain evidence about his role in helping the bank, Boston-based OneUnited, get language written into legislation that would ultimately help it secure federal bailout assistance.

.......

In November, in an unusual maneuver, the charges against Ms. Waters and the investigation were referred back to the committee for further work. Committee staff said that the action was a result of the failure of Ms. Waters’s office and the House Financial Services Committee to fully comply with a request for documents. In fact, according to the internal committee memos, it was the ethics committee staff’s own mistake, as it had not previously requested Mr. Moore’s personal e-mails.

“The behavior was inappropriate and misleading,” Mr. Chisam wrote, as he also detailed what he called inappropriate conversations and e-mails between a committee lawyer and Mr. Bonner and his staff about the case. “The staff also misled me. That was insubordinate.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/us/19ethics.html?_r=1&hpw

[midnight]

1. K&R

[truedelphi]

2. K & R. n/t