Charles B. Rangel. *Photo credit: nypost.com
WASHINGTON, CMC – Congressional Democratic legislators are urging a strong advocate for the Caribbean to settle with the House of Representatives’ Ethics Committee charges that he violated a range of ethics rules.
The lawmakers said they fear, if Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel, 80, does otherwise, he risks endangering the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
A House investigative panel said last week that it found “substantial reason to believe” that the popular Rangel, the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had violated ethic rules.
A public trial before the House of Representatives’ Ethics Committee is set to begin Thursday on a slew of charges that have yet to be fully revealed.
Rangel will be the first member of Congress to be forced to go on trial since 2002, when Congressman James A. Traficant was expelled after a corruption conviction.
But Democratic leaders said that they don’t want to wait around for an “embarrassing or prolonged trial” that could tarnish the party’s image heading into the fall elections.
“This will be the third straight weed Democrats are off message,” said a Democratic leadership aide, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of influencing ongoing negotiations.
“Leadership knows that this is not the way that vulnerable Democrats want to head into the August break. Look for Rangel to face increasing pressure for a quick resolution,” he added.
Congressional Democrats with knowledge of the investigation told reporters that the committee found evidence to support allegations that Rangel wrongly accepted four rent-stabilized apartments in Manhattan.
In addition, the committee found evidence to support the allegation that Rangel failed to report or pay taxes on rental income from his beachfront villa in the Dominican Republic.
In March, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct admonished Rangel for trips he and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus took to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008 that were indirectly paid for by corporate sponsors, such as Pfizer, Verizon and AT&T, in violation of House rules.
The trips, made to St. Maarten and Antigua and Barbuda, were organised by the New York-based CaribNews newspaper.
But Rangel has vowed to clear his name.
“I think I owe it to the process to find out what the investigative committee found out,” he told reporters over the weekend.
Meanwhile, New York Governor David Paterson, whose grandparents were from Jamaica and Grenada, said he still supports Rangel.
“I support Congressman Rangel 100 per cent; I support him in his re-election bid,” he told reporters, adding “obviously, there are charges that he has to face, and I think the resolution of that is something that we don’t know in the future”.
