Rangel Ethics Probe Expands

ABC News' Jonathan Karl and Rick Klein reports:

The House ethics committee announced today that members have voted to expand their inquiry into House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel’s financial irregularities, to include changes he made to financial disclosure statements.

It’s the latest in several expansions of the Rangel probe over the past year, and it comes as Republicans are stepping up pressure on Democrats to remove Rangel, D-N.Y., from his powerful post atop the tax-writing committee.

The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct also said in a brief statement that it has authorized nearly 150 subpoenas in the Rangel investigations, has interviewed 34 witnesses who have accumulated some 2,100 pages of transcripts, and reviewed more than 12,000 pages of documents. Those details suggest a more aggressive investigation than previously known. 

GOP lawmakers used the announcement of an expanded probe to renew their calls for Rangel to step aside pending the ethics committee’s findings.

“If you don’t drain the swamp, you’ll end up with a lake,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “This isn’t an isolated incident — it’s a pattern-of-behavior.”

House Democrats yesterday voted to deflect a resolution offered by Republicans that would have stripped Rangel of his gavel.

This is the third time the committee has opened up new areas of investigation into Rep. Rangel’s conduct. To recap:

On July 31, 2008, the committee launched a “review” of:

• Rangel’s four luxury rent-stabilized apartments in New York. These are apartments that Rangel enjoys for about half their market value at a time when others in rent stabilized apartments are facing evictions as the city cuts down on rent control.

• Rangel’s use of official Congressional stationary to raise money for the City College of New York’s “Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service”. The letters were sent to those with business before the Ways & Means Committee and were seen by some as a not-so-subtle shakedown.

On September 24, 2008, the committee voted to conduct an official investigation into the rental-controlled apartments, the fundraising for the Rangel Center and two additional issues:

• Rangel’s failure to disclose or pay taxes on a no-interest loans Rangel he received to buy a condo at the Punta Cana Yacht Club in the Dominican Republic.
• Rangel’s failure to disclose or pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income Rangel received from the Punta Cana condo.

On February 10, 2009, the committee voted to re-authorize its investigation of these matters in the new Congress.

And today, the committee voted to once again expand its investigation to include:

• Rangel’s failure to report more than $500,000 in assets on his financial disclosure forms required from all members of Congress.

Back in November of last year, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she expected the ethics committee to complete its investigation by January 3, 2009.  Ten months after that deadline passed, it appears the Rangel investigation is nowhere near over.