John Sununu to Gingrich: How about releasing those ethics documents?
It isn't clear to me exactly what anyone wants released that has not been in the public realm for many years now. The full ethics committee report has been available online since 1997.
politico.com
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
[The speaker's office issued a statement noting that yesterday's dismissal of the last three charges means that 83 of the 84 ethics allegations filed by Democrats have been dropped. The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics panel is formally known, also decided to defer to a federal judge's decision to dismiss an allegation that GOPAC improperly subsidized Gingrich's 1990 reelection campaign.
U.S. District Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer in 1996 threw out a Federal Elections Commission lawsuit contending that GOPAC broke election laws by assisting federal candidates and not making its donor lists and spending reports public.
The ethics panel was "persuaded by the court's findings" that the laws were not violated, Hansen and Berman wrote.
"It appears to us that to the extent that GOPAC was exonerated by the court, you are by implication exonerated as well," they wrote to Gingrich.]
The only charge by the ethics committee that was not dropped involved Gingrich having signed an official statement to the committee that was prepared by his attorneys, and included information that was incorrrect. He acknowledged responsibility for the error, and paid a $300,000 fine.
The IRS subsequently found that the use of his tax-exempt 501C foundation in preparing the "Renewing American Civilization" course did NOT in fact violate tax law, contrary to the charges by the committee.
This is all a very old story. Newt's opponents, the media, and of course all the Democrats, just love to keep it alive, using it to hurt his candidacy. |
