The Hill notes that the Ethics Comittee’s Rep. Green said he made a mistake by indicating how the committee wanted to handle the matter involving Rep. Rangel. Meanwhile, there seem to be more calls for Rep. Rangel to resign.
A Politico story reports what Rep. Rangel allegedly thinks about President Obama’s view of his situation.
On the substance of the case, The Post looks at some of Rangel’s defenses.
“My own view is that people in public office should not anywhere be in these transactions,” said Frances R. Hill, a specialist in campaign finance law and professor at the University of Miami who has followed the practice for more than a decade. “Their only relationship with charities should be as contributors out of their own personal funds. When you start being a middleman in these transactions, then inevitably these questions will be raised, and will have to be answered.”
But independent campaign finance lawyers say Rangel’s case illustrates how slow federal lawmakers have been in understanding the risks of creating what one expert called “Monuments to Me”: charities designed at least in part to provide them a post-retirement office where they may contemplate their life amid their collected papers.