Harlem's shame, the disgraced Charlie Rangel (D-NY), is suing Speaker John Boehner and six other lawmakers, alleging problems with the House ethics investigation that led to his censure in 2010.
In a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, Rangel alleges "numerous, flagrant, knowing and intentional violations" of his due process rights.
The lawsuit names Boehner; Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who was chairwoman of the House ethics committee at the time of the censure; and other committee members and staff. The congressman alleges that evidence was withheld by the committee staff.
The lawsuit doesn't allege any wrongdoing by Boehner. Democrats controlled the chamber and the ethics panel at the time of Rangel's censure. In the complaint, Rangel named Boehner as a defendant because he says it would be up to Boehner to purge the censure from the Congressional Record.
In December 2010, the House voted 333-79 to censure Rangel for multiple ethical misdeeds - including failing to pay taxes for 17 years on rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic and soliciting donations from companies with business before the Ways and Means Committee while he was chairman. The donations were going to a center being built in Rangel's honor at the City College of New York.
Censure is the most serious punishment, short of expulsion, that Congress can impose on one of its own members. Rangel became the first congressman in nearly three decades to be publicly rebuked in such a fashion.
It was a stunning fall for Rangel, who has spent more than four decades in Congress and once chaired the powerful tax-writing committee. He had lost the chairmanship earlier in 2010 in a separate ethics case involving accepting corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean in violation of House rules.
It really should have happened sooner. Only the fact that Nancy Pelosi was Speaker kept him out of trouble for so long. Both the New York Times and the New York Post were reporting on his shady dealings in 2008. But even Pelosi could cover for him only so long. Rangel doesn't claim that he is innocent, just that he was smeared by his colleagues.
Rangel's lawyer also states that the Harlem lawmaker's due process rights were violated under the Constitution and that the U.S. District Court of D.C. has a responsibility to decide on the case.
"The court cannot, under the circumstances described above, leave undisturbed and without adequate remedy, a plaintiff who has been knowingly, intentionally and willfully denied his right to due process, the protection of his other fundamental rights and his protected liberty interest, where the House has been purposefully misled as described herein: he must have this court to repair to, in order to vindicate his constitutional rights," Rangel's complaint states.
Naturally he's the victim of a conspiracy, not his own greed.
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