Posted on 07/01/2002 11:59:00 AM PDT by xsysmgr
Charges of “egregious misconduct” leveled against Rep. James Traficant and a televised public hearing set to decide his Congressional future next month create some big questions for him and his colleagues.
Will the flamboyant maverick will be allowed to transform the forum into a riotous outlet for his populist grievances? Will his fellow lawmakers contain the often wild and always eccentric Traficant?
Even though a jury of 12 Ohio citizens issued its 10 guilty verdicts nearly three months ago and prison looms, the disciplinary power for a wayward lawmaker rests separately in the hands of Traficant’s fellow colleagues by virtue of the Constitution.
Meticulously following the rarely used, labyrinth-like procedures for disciplining one of their own, the House ethics committee set July 15 as the date to start a trial-like hearing to decide if Traficant abused his office by trading political influence for personal gain. None of the charges of House violations is new or unexpected. The four-member panel that presented the list of allegations merely combed through 6,000 pages of trial transcripts, the work that had already been done by a team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents.
“In the view of the Investigative Subcommittee, Representative Traficant violated the letter and spirit of each of the aforementioned standards of conduct. Indeed, as noted previously, the examples of Representative Traficant’s misconduct set forth in this letter are only a partial list of the egregious misconduct for which Representative Traficant is charged in the Statement of Alleged Violations,” the panel said.
“The charges in the Statement of Alleged Violations are of the most serious nature and are abundantly supported by the evidence in the record, and which evidence demonstrates that Representative Traficant continually traded his office and the duties he swore to uphold for money and a wide range of other things of value,” the panel charged.
The panel — led by Reps. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) — noted that it could have charged Traficant with additional infractions for violating the House gift rule in accepting free legal help and using a Congressional staff member as an assistant during his 10-week trial in Cleveland. It also said that Traficant likely filed false financial disclosure forms that did not reveal the gifts and debts he had incurred over his Congressional career.
The hearing is slated to open on a Monday, and if it’s like most summer Mondays, it is likely to be a slow news day that will almost certainly guarantee a room filled with television cameras and reporters anxious to witness a proceeding that hasn’t been seen since the ethics travails of former Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) in 1989.
In its statement of alleged violations and accompanying documents released late Thursday night, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics panel is formally known, gave few details about the planned hearings, other than to list the starting date and the eight members of the adjudicatory panel hearing the case. The panel includes ethics Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) and ranking member Howard Berman (D-Calif.), along with two of Traficant’s fellow Ohioans, Reps. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D) and Steven LaTourette (R).
It’s been more than a decade since the last adjudicatory ethics hearing, so there’s little practical experience to draw on. A fairly detailed explanation of the procedures is outlined in the committee’s set of rules, which provide for the calling of witnesses by Traficant with the permission of the panel members.
The length of time the hearings are expected to take is uncertain, but leadership aides said that it should last only a couple of days at most and that the final resolution on Traficant’s status will hit the House floor the week of July 22.
The case against Traficant will be presented by two committee lawyers, Ken Kellner and Paul Lewis, both experienced ethics counsels. One interesting question is whether Traficant will be permitted to subpoena and take testimony from the lead prosecutor in his criminal trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Morford. Traficant had made a daily sport of challenging Morford to testify during the trial, an offer that was rejected by courtroom procedure, Morford and the judge.
During Traficant’s 10-week trial in a stately Cleveland courthouse, he openly proclaimed that he would turn the proceedings into a “donnybrook” and portrayed the trial as a showdown between himself and a gang of vindictive Justice Department lawyers. Each day, he would wade into a sea of television crews and reporters hovering on the courtroom steps to pop his latest, humorous one-liners that were often laced with profanity and personal attacks on the lawyers and witnesses lined up against him.
Of course, by any reasonable standard, Traficant’s strategy was a complete failure. He was found guilty on all of the 10 charges against him, and members of the jury said after the verdicts were handed down that his outlandish courtroom antics damaged his case significantly.
Lawmakers and aides from both parties predict the ultimate outcome for Traficant will be expulsion from the House. “He’s a criminal, a Mafioso,” said one top Democratic aide. “He will be expelled from the Congress. He will be sentenced to a long term in prison and we will be rid of him. And that’s a good thing.”
But before that vote occurs in late July, the House will be faced with Traficant’s presence for the first time this year. There were no television cameras inside the courtroom to capture the behavior that often infuriated Judge Lesley Brooks Wells and left spectators shaking their heads in disbelief. But cameras will be in place when Traficant paces before eight of his fellow lawmakers who are charged with determining whether there is “clear and convincing” evidence of his guilt.
While the committee rules allow TV cameras, they also provide that they may be turned off if the committee decides to continue the hearing behind closed doors in executive session. While the prospect of a decision to close down public hearings may govern Traficant’s strategy, it’s also something that may present committee members with an undesirable political problem in being portrayed as a “star chamber.”
Traficant’s spokesman, Charlie Straub, didn’t return phone calls Friday but told The Associated Press that the lawmaker plans to mount a “vigorous” defense during the hearing. It is unclear whether Traficant will conduct his defense alone or will have the assistance of legal counsel.
Ironically, Traficant’s fellow House Democrats may actually be counting on the Ohio lawmaker to throw a public fit.
In a haunting reminder of the strategy employed by former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ill.) before the GOP’s 1994 takeover of the chamber, a senior Democratic aide noted that, “It can only be detrimental to Congress as an institution, which can only be helpful to the party out of power in the November elections.”
Reminded of the similarities to Gingrich’s tactics, the aide replied, “It’s true.”
Other longtime aides expressed a more sanguine view of the upcoming theater: “Everybody is just filled with dread,” said one. “This is not good for the institution.”.
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