Facing Congressional Tribunal, Indicted Democratic Congresswoman Accused of Embezzling FEMA Funds Abruptly Resigns

Minutes before she was due to face a public tribunal by the House Ethics Committee, Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from the House after being accused of stealing millions in Covid-era FEMA funds. The panel was set to vote on recommending to either censure or expel her. Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick allegedly stole the funds from a Florida state agency after her parents’ healthcare company was given the money to administer vaccines. After taking the money, she allegedly loaned it to her congressional campaign immediately before a fundraising deadline, only to then return the money to her own account in order to appear as a wealth self-funding candidate. Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick has been indicted by the federal government for the alleged scheme. She maintains her innocence. The House Ethics Committee has been investigating the now-former congresswoman for more than two years. At a rare public hearing last month to ask questions about potential House rules and ethics violations, Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick appeared alongside her lawyer, though she did not speak. “I mean, listen — if the committee is going to take action, at the very least you have to give us a hearing, you have to allow me to call witnesses [in] her defense, you have to let me cross-examine witnesses that [committee] staff put up. You can’t just decide this on the paper and push it aside,” her lawyer, William Barzee said at the outset of the hearing in March. “I need to be able to see witnesses. She has a right to confront those witnesses.”The chairman of the committee, Congressman Michael Guest, was not happy with her attorney’s accusations. “For two years, the committee has worked to gather documents. For two years, we have tried to get documents from your client,” Mr. Guest said at the hearing. “For you to allege that … we’ve not tried to gather this information for the last two years, I find that offensive.”The following day, members of the Ethics Committee took a vote behind closed doors to find that she had violated House rules and its ethical standards on more than two dozen occasions. In a statement Tuesday, Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick accused the committee of launching a “witch hunt” against her. “By going forward with this process while a criminal indictment is pending, the Committee prevented me from defending myself,” she wrote. “I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished.” “Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away,” she declared. The resignation came just 30 minutes before the Ethics Committee was set to hold a sanctions hearing for Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, which would have included members opining about what punishment would be best for their colleague. The two most likely outcomes would have been a recommendation of censure or a recommendation of expulsion. It only takes a simple majority to censure a lawmaker on the floor, which would lead to that member being stripped of his or her committee assignments. Expulsion, however, is a much higher bar with a two-thirds majority being needed to kick out a House member. The sanctions hearing still convened after her resignation, though only for Mr. Guest to declare that his panel no longer had jurisdiction over Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick. The Ethics Committee cannot investigate former House members, so her resignation saved her from additional public embarrassment. “In light of Ms. [Cherfilus-]McCormick’s resignation earlier today, the Committee on Ethics has now lost jurisdiction in this matter. There will not be a sanctions hearing,” Mr. Guest said. “I would like to thank the committee staff who are with us today for their two-and-a-half years of hard work in this matter.”“This is not a rush to judgment, as some would claim. This was a very deliberate process to gather information into allegations that were extremely serious,” he declared.

Facing Congressional Tribunal, Indicted Democratic Congresswoman Accused of Embezzling FEMA Funds Abruptly Resigns

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