Rangel House Trial Possible Later This Summer

Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and stepped down under pressure from charges in March. Now a subcommittee of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, composed of four Republicans and four Democrats are ready with even more charges. There can be a House trial later this summer.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pledged to run the “most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in History.” Still the House has drug their collective feet for over two years over charges against Rangel. Now though it looks like the foot dragging may embarrass the Democrats even more. The trial in the House will probably be later this summer. This is more good news for the Democrats before the mid-term elections in November.

It was disclosed Thursday that Rangel is being charged with multiple ethics violations. The ethics committee won't reveal the specific charges until next Thursday at a public meeting. Several persons familiar with the allegations, who were not authorized to discuss them publicly, said some of the charges against Rangel, who has spent 40 years in Congress, were related to:

•Violating New York state and city zoning laws, Rep. Rangel rented in 2008 several rent-stabilized Harlem apartments and used one for a base of operations for his reelection effort.

•Days later it was revealed Rangel had used congressional letterhead to solicit funds for his personal foundation, the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.

•The following month, in August of 2008, the New York Post reported that Rangel had failed to disclose income from renting his beachfront villa on a Dominican Republic resort. In total, Rangel failed to disclose $75,000 in rental income since 1988. Rangel secured a seven-year fixed rate loan at 10.5 % for the property, but two years later the interest on the loan, which was awarded by a company for which the congressman was an early investor, was waived. Rangel paid $10,800 in back-taxes for his 2004, 2005 and 2006 tax returns for the unreported rental income.

•Rangel violated House rules and failed to report income to the IRS when he left his 1972 Mercedes in a House parking lot for several years without registering the car. The car, without license plates and covered by a tarp, occupied a space for several years valued a $290 per month.

•In November 2008, the Post’s muckrakers discovered that Rangel had improperly received a “homestead” tax exemption on a property he owned in Washington, D.C., while occupying his four rent-stabilized apartments in New York City.

•Rangel secured tax benefits for a company whose chief executive he was courting as a donor for his private foundation.

•And most recently, a House panel admonished the scandal-plagued congressman for wrongly accepting reimbursements for two Caribbean trips in 2007 and 2008.

On this YouTube video you see the arrogant Rangel. "I look forward to airing this thing," Rangel, who is tied for fourth in House seniority, told reporters Thursday, insisting the allegations against him have no substance. "I am pleased that, at long last, sunshine will pierce the cloud of serious allegations that have been raised against me in the media," he said.



Again on public display is Congress. This Congress has shown itself to be the most corrupt ever. For lesser charges the main stream media has run Republicans out of office. They don’t seem to have the stomach to do the same to Democrats.

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