Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been found guilty on 11 ethics charges, ending a two-year investigation into his personal finances.
A special eight-member panel of the House ethics committee, after deliberating for roughly six hours, found that there was "clear and convincing evidence" that Rangel had violated House ethics on 11 of the 13 charges he faced heading into a rare public ethics trial.
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Rangel, 80, walked out of his ethics trial on Monday, complaining that he had not been given enough time to find new legal counsel after parting ways with his previous law firm last month. The full ethics committee will now consider punishment for Rangel, and possibly refer the case to the House floor with a recommendation for a sanction against the lawmaker. Rangel is likely to face either a reprimand or a censure from his House colleagues.
The sweeping verdict on Tuesday morning offered a powerful conclusion to a two-year ethics investigation that has tarnished the political legacy of Rangel, a Harlem giant who was stripped of his Ways and Means chairmanship while he was under investigation. He came to the ethics trial as a diminished political figure, complaining that he did not have enough money for a lawyer.
He offered a brief but spirited defense on Monday, then walked out after just 30 minutes, leaving the special adjudicatory panel to try him in abstentia. The bipartisan panel quickly heard the evidence and agreed in less than 24 hours that Rangel had violated a wide range of ethics rules.
Rangel was facing a 13-count “Statement of Alleged Violation” that included allegations that he improperly solicited millions of dollars from corporate officials and lobbyists for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at The City College of New York, failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars of income and assets on financial disclosure forms, illegally maintained multiple rent-stabilized apartments in a luxury Harlem apartment building and failed to pay income taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic.
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