In defending herself against congressional ethics charges, Rep. Maxine Waters plans to put a surprising witness on the stand: The House Ethics Committee.
The committee unveiled a three-count charge against the California Democrat on Monday, alleging she broke conflict-of-interest rules by helping arrange a cash infusion of more than $12 million in federal bailout funds for a troubled bank in which her husband was a large shareholder.
Waters has countered that her initial assistance was intended to benefit a broad category of minority-owned banks, not just her husband's bank, and that follow-up help to the bank was minimal and handled by staff.
The congresswoman has expressed no intention of settling the case. She is expected instead to defend herself in an ethics trial, which would probably begin in September.
In her defense, Waters and her attorneys intend to present the case of another member of Congress who recently faced similar charges before the ethics committee and was exonerated.
Rep. Sam Graves, a four-term Missouri Republican who sat on the Small Business Committee, was accused of helping his wife's investment partner by inviting him to testify before the committee. Graves said that his wife's partner was acting on behalf of a larger trade association and that his staff had selected him to testify.
The ethics committee cleared him of the charges.
"This committee has adopted an approach that is sharply divergent and significantly harsher than the decision rendered in Graves and other relevant precedent," Waters's attorneys, Stanley Brand and Andrew Herman, wrote the Ethics Committee last month. "In light of the disparate treatment of Representative Waters the allegations cannot be reconciled with this committee's precedent."
Read on.
Graves' investigation ended last year fining no ethic violations.
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