A watchdog group pegged the office tasked with investigating ethics complaints as a top violator of 2023 after “complete inaction” on suspected congressional malfeasance.
Closing out the year, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) released its annual list of “Top Ethics Violators” with an “unprecedented move.” Rather than highlight a common rule violated or a particular individual’s egregious actions, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) was selected for its “utter failure to enforce a very basic ethics rule.”
As detailed by its release, the OCE had been created in 2008 because the House Ethics Committee had proven incapable when expected to “self-police.” Failing to complete its main function, FACT executive director Kendra Arnold unloaded over the “undermined public trust.”
“The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) has failed in its duty to hold Members of Congress accountable,” she said in a statement. “Its complete inaction in numerous cases of Members abusing official taxpayer funded resources for political purposes functions as an endorsement of violating basic ethics rules — and it’s simply not too much to ask for enforcement when violations openly appear in places as public as social media platforms.”
“The OCE’s continued failure to act will only result in further erosion of public trust in Congress and those bodies intended to hold them accountable,” added Arnold.
The release went on to provide examples of the readily proven violations that are “literally published by the Member, all occur on a public-facing platform, and evidence of the violation can be found and proven merely by going to Twitter.com/”
Notable examples included Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Eric Swalwell of California, Cori Bush of Missouri, and Maxwell Frost of Florida.
In particular, FACT pointed out the violations of House Ethics rules on the use of TikTok for both campaign and political purposes from Bowman and Omar, Swalwell’s use of video of House Committee proceedings with a campaign logo overlay, as well as Bush’s use of congressional resources to solicit campaign donations by sharing C-SPAN video of her disrupting an official House proceeding.
Another ‘Squad’ member facing ethics complaint over alleged misuse of congressional resources https://t.co/vswDx796j5 pic.twitter.com/nwp1o2JNJO
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) August 9, 2023
“FACT’s other notable ethics violations involve illegal payments to politicians, disrupting the democratic process and foreign nationals influencing our politics — all among the more serious violations,” said Arnold. “In 2024, we look forward to the relevant ethics bodies moving quickly to investigate these cases and apply any applicable penalties.”
Bowman was listed a second time when his fire alarm antics “whether to explicitly delay a vote or not” earned him a “Dishonorable Mention” for a blatant violation of House Ethics Rules.
Another mention went to Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) who was said to have received $154,895 from Ebenezer Baptist Church in 2022, $125,000 of which was described as “deferred compensation for services before January 20, 2021,” which both parties had failed to report previously.
Fox News Digital noted that between July and September 2023, “the OCE reported receiving 3,624 communications for requests for information and allegations of misconduct. It’s unclear whether OCE opened preliminary investigations into the alleged violations of social media policy. The OCE did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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