Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday announced his picks for the new GOP-led House Ethics Committee: Republicans who lied to the public about the results of the 2020 presidential election and tried to throw the election in favor of the loser, Donald Trump.
“House Republicans are working to restore integrity, accountability, and transparency to the halls of Congress,” McCarthy, who also tried to undermine the election’s results, said in a statement. “Members on this committee will be able to build trust among the American people and will ensure Members of Congress are held to a standard befitting their title.”
Of the five McCarthy Republicans named to the ethics panel, three voted to overturn the president’s election by pegging the lie that it was stolen from Trump. He is chairing the new committee, Rep. Michael Guest (Ms.), along with Rep. John Rutherford (Fla.) and Michelle Fischbach (Minn.). The other two GOP members are Reps. Dave Joyce (Ohio) and Andrew Garbarino (NY).
The guest stands out for a particularly egregious record with telling the truth. In addition to voting to cancel the 2020 presidential election, Guest introduced a bill shortly after the election. raising concerns about mail-in voting has “many potential pitfalls that we don’t fully understand,” although there is no evidence of significant problems. Mississippi Republicans too entered into a Texas amicus brief in a lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election based on lies about widespread voter fraud.
Guest is a ranking Republican on the ethics panel for the last month of the previous Congress after the death of Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), who has been a top GOPer.
The committee is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, and has the power to impose fines on lawmakers or recommend member discipline by the full House. Investigations into MPs and staff are slow, and the chairman and ranking member must agree on which complaints to pursue after they are submitted to the panel.
An obvious conflict of interest for the committee’s new members is related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. At the end of December, when the Democrats led the House, the chamber’s January 6 committee called McCarthy and three other Republicans to the ethics panel for violating congressional rules by defying subpoenas for testimony and documents related to the attack.
Today, the ethics panel is not only chaired by Republicans who have no incentive to investigate party leaders, but is overseen by Guest, who has led to lies that have fueled rebellion. In other words, this committee cannot hold Republicans accountable for their role before, during or after the riots.
The Office of Congressional Ethics, a bipartisan watchdog whose past work has led to resignations and criminal charges for members of both political parties, would normally be well-positioned to investigate potential violations by McCarthy and other Republicans. That mandate includes looking at violations of “laws, rules, regulations, or other standards of conduct” by members of the House of Representatives.
But House Republicans, in one of the first actions in the new Congress, voted almost unanimously for undermine the ethical office.