Maxine Waters Ethics Probe Continues

Maxine Waters Did Not Violate House Rules, Ethics Investigation Finds

Sep 212012

Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The House Ethics committee announced Friday that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., did not violate House rules after a three-year investigation examining her office’s assistance to a bank tied to her husband during the depths of the financial crisis. But a special investigator says her chief of staff, who is also her grandson, may have acted improperly in violation of House rules.

Waters, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, was accused of improperly using her influence in 2008 to help secure the TARP funds for the struggling bank. Throughout the drawn-out process, she steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.

The allegations stem from a meeting that Waters’ chief of staff requested with then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson at the start of the financial crisis in September 2008. Waters and Paulson did not attend the meeting, but senior Treasury officials and members of the National Bankers Association (NBA), a trade organization representing over 100 minority-owned firms, did. An ethics report found that at that meeting and in follow-up conversations “the discussion centered on a single bank — OneUnited,” where Waters’ husband was a board member from 2004 to 2008.

Waters and her husband sat behind their grandson, Mikael Moore, at the hearing, although neither spoke before the committee.

Former special prosecutor Billy Martin said his investigation “found no evidence in the record to support that [Waters'] phone call to arrange the meeting violated any House rule or any other standard of conduct.”

Martin, who was hired as outside council to examine whether the committee should empanel an investigative subcommittee, questioned the credibility of Moore’s testimony. He said evidence proved that once Waters learned of OneUnited’s request for special treatment, she told Moore not to continue to work the matter. Still, he said that Moore disobeyed that order and continued to intervene on behalf of the bank.

Martin recommended that Moore receive a letter of reproval that he brought discredit to the House, although the committee must still rule on those recommendations.

Today, Moore continued to attempt to defend himself against any accusations of intentional wrongdoing, but expressed remorse for the entire ordeal.

“My heavy heart really is around the idea that whether it’s a letter of reproval [sic] or someone just saying that the idea that I knowingly and intentionally used the congresswoman’s office for personal gain, that I disrespected the House, is a very difficult pill to swallow,” Moore said. “This has been a tough process for me and for the congresswoman, for her office, for her constituents. I am glad, excited, encouraged that it’s coming to an end.”

On financial disclosure forms, Waters and her husband reported owning $352,089.64 worth of stock at OneUnited in June 2008. By the end of September, the value of the stock had plummeted to $175,000, but what remained was salvaged thanks to a portion of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. OneUnited received $12 million in TARP funds.

Moore has denied knowing that his grandfather was invested in the bank, although Martin said there were “inconsistencies” with his testimony. Martin said he “found Mr. Moore’s denial incredible and doubted the credibility of his testimony in general.”

Waters, an 11-term lawmaker, was set to have a public trial Nov. 29, 2010, but it was cancelled after she raised allegations regarding the deprivation of her due process rights. Last June, the committee told Waters that the only due process she is entitled to under House and committee rules “is notice and the opportunity to be heard,” and it informed her that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to committee proceedings. The committee previously dismissed Waters’ charge that “inappropriate and/or racially insensitive remarks may have biased the investigation” into the matter.

Waters is running for a 12th term in what ABC News rates as a solid Democratic district — part of Los Angeles and its environs — in a rematch against her primary opponent, fellow Democrat Bob Flores, after defeating him 65 to 34 last June. She currently represents the 35th congressional district, but redistricting placed her in California’s newly drawn 43rd district.

Maxine Waters Continues to Question Misconduct by Ethics Committee

Jun 072012

Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Within 24 hours of the House Ethics Committee’s dismissal of her assertions that her constitutional rights were violated, Rep. Maxine Waters began to fight back.

Waters is accused of steering $12 million in TARP funds to a minority-owned bank with ties to her husband in 2008. The ethics committee’s trial was to begin in November 2010 but was delayed after the California Democrat claimed her rights — racial insensitivity, leaked documents, too much time until trial — had been violated.

On Thursday, Waters demanded that the committee release a report issued by Billy Martin, the special counsel hired to investigate allegations of staff misconduct at the committee.

“The Committee must immediately release Mr. Martin’s report, which forms the basis of their determination to dismiss Representative Waters’ due process concerns,” Waters, D-Calif., writes in a letter signed by 68 of her Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives. “Without the public, the Congress and Representative Waters being able to review the findings included in this report, the integrity of the Committee’s process will further be called into question.”

The committee ultimately hired Martin, an attorney with Dorsey & Whitney, as an outside counsel to investigate Waters’ allegations regarding the deprivation of her due process rights. His past clients include the parents of Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky’s mother, former Sen. Larry Craig and NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

Waters also notes that releasing the report is necessary to restore public confidence in the ethics committee and to afford Waters the opportunity to respond. She complains that despite the committee’s concession that a former staff member invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and that staff made “inappropriate and/or racially insensitive remarks” about the congresswoman, the committee still dismissed her allegations that her constitutional rights had been violated.

“Considering that it was the conduct of the Committee that necessitated Mr. Martin’s investigation in the first place, which came at the cost of up to $800,000 to the U.S. taxpayer, we feel that it is absolutely essential that the Committee move forward with absolute transparency and release Mr. Martin’s report,” she writes.

A senior aide to Waters revealed that the California Democrat personally collected each signature over the past 24 hours. So far the ethics committee has not commented on her letter.

Wednesday the panel released its letter to Waters, paving the way for the full ethics investigation to continue. Waters, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, still stands accused of improperly using her influence in 2008 to help secure the TARP funds for the struggling bank. She has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.

Maxine Waters Ethics Probe Continues

Jun 062012

Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The ethics investigation of Maxine Waters, the California representative accused of steering $12 million in TARP funds to a minority-owned bank with ties to her husband, is set to resume.

Wednesday the House Committee on Ethics released a letter to Waters, dismissing the embattled Democrat’s allegations that her constitutional rights had been violated.

Waters, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, still stands accused of improperly using her influence in 2008 to help secure the TARP funds for the struggling bank. She has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.

After Waters raised allegations during the 111th Congress that her constitutional rights — length of the investigation, racially insensitive remarks, leaking of confidential documents — were violated during the committee’s first investigation, the House Ethics Committee cancelled a public trial for Waters that had been set for Nov. 29, 2010.

The committee ultimately hired Dorsey & Whitney attorney Billy Martin, whose past clients include the parents of Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky’s mother, Sen. Larry Craig and NFL quarterback Michael Vick, as an outside counsel to investigate of Waters’ allegations regarding the deprivation of her due process rights.

In the letter released Wednesday, Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and John Yarmuth, D-Ky., the respective acting chairman and ranking member working on the matter after five Republicans and the top Democrat on the panel withdrew themselves from the case, told Waters that the only due process she is entitled to under House and committee rules “is notice and the opportunity to be heard.”

The committee dismissed the charge that “inappropriate and/or racially insensitive remarks may have biased the investigation” into the matter. The committee says the investigation “revealed some evidence of insensitive remarks by a former committee staff member,” but outside counsel and the committee agreed that “any such insensitivity did not affect any decision-making of the Members of the Committee.”

It also informed Waters that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to committee proceedings, and she is not entitled to a speedy trial like a criminal defendant.

As for whether confidential information was leaked, the letter also disclosed that investigators found “three instances in which confidential committee information was disclosed,” with one example attributed to the congresswoman herself during a news conference on Aug. 13, 2010, when she “disclosed documents containing significant evidentiary information.”

The committee’s review did not uncover the identity of the person or persons responsible for the other leaks, although one witness, described as “a former member of the staff of the committee,” invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when responding to questions regarding the leaked documents.

A spokesman for Waters did not immediately respond to a request for comment reacting to the committee’s letter.