From POLITICO
Rep. Maxine Waters is calling for the House Ethics Committee to dismiss the long-running case against her, claiming she can’t get fair treatment from the secretive panel in the wake of allegations that staffers improperly shared information in an investigation into her finances.
Waters (D-Calif.), who is threatening to bring her fight to the House floor, was reacting to a POLITICO story Monday that included internal emails, memos and documents from inside the Ethics Committee that revealed bitter internal disputes on the panel over the allegations against Waters. Blake Chisam, the former staff director and chief counsel for the Ethics Committee, accused the two lead investigators on the Waters case of secretly feeding information to Republicans on the Ethics Committee, including Alabama Rep. Jo Bonner. Chisam also accused the staffers of misleading lawmakers and other staff on the status of the Waters investigation. Bonner is now chairman of the Ethics Committee.
The two former Ethics Committee staffers in question, Morgan Kim and Stacey Sovereign, have in turn accused Chisam and his former boss, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), of trying to go soft on Democrats like Waters and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).
Today’s POLITICO story, and accompanying documents, leave no doubt that the House Ethics Committee violated both its own rules and Rep. Waters’s constitutional rights during its investigation of her matter last Congress,” Stan Brand, Waters’s attorney, said in a statement.
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