Showing posts with label House ethics committee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House ethics committee. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Ethics Panel Rebukes Congressman for Wife’s Stock Trade in Firm He Helped; The New York Times, July 25, 2025

 , The New York Times; Ethics Panel Rebukes Congressman for Wife’s Stock Trade in Firm He Helped

"The House Ethics Committee on Friday rebuked a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and urged him and his wife to sell their holdings in a steel company in his district after a four-year investigation into a stock trade found that he had violated the House’s official code of conduct.

In its report, the committee cited Representative Mike Kelly, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, for a “lack of candor” in its inquiry into 2020 trades by his wife, Victoria, involving a local steel company that was seeking government intervention to prevent layoffs or the closure of its plant in Butler, Pa., in Mr. Kelly’s district.

Mr. Kelly was actively lobbying the Trump administration for trade protections for the plant, newly purchased by the company Cleveland-Cliffs, and learned that the Commerce Department was going to intervene in favor of the firm. The next day — five days before the Commerce action was made public — his wife purchased 5,000 shares of Cleveland-Cliffs stock. She later sold the stock at a nearly $65,000 profit, a roughly 285-percent gain.

Members of Congress are prohibited from using confidential information for financial benefit and must disclose transactions by them or close family members valued at more than $1,000, but efforts to tighten those rules or bar lawmakers from trading stocks altogether have so far been unsuccessful. That has created an environment rife with potential conflicts of interest, in which many lawmakers who are active in the stock market have unique insight into or influence over companies whose shares they are buying and selling."

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Congressman Combating Harassment Settled His Own Misconduct Case; New York Times, January 20, 2018

Katie Rogers and Kenneth P. Vogel, New York Times; 

Congressman Combating Harassment Settled His Own Misconduct Case


"After this article was published online, AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, said that Mr. Meehan was being removed immediately from the House Ethics Committee, where he has helped investigate sexual misconduct claims, and that the panel would investigate the allegations against him. In addition, Mr. Ryan told Mr. Meehan that he should repay the taxpayer funds, Ms. Strong said.

Sexual misconduct accusations against powerful men across a range of industries in recent months have prompted a national conversation about gender dynamics in the workplace, and the inadequacy of support systems for victims."

Saturday, January 29, 2011

House Ethics Committee Clears 3 of Conflict of Interest; New York Times, 1/27/11

Eric Lipton, New York Times; House Ethics Committee Clears 3 of Conflict of Interest:

"The House ethics committee, in one of its first official acts since the start of the new Congress, dismissed cases involving three members accused of creating an appearance of a conflict by holding fund-raising events with financial industry executives and lobbyists in the days before major votes on legislation revamping the nation’s financial regulations.

The decision came as a relief to lawmakers. If the ethics committee had found violations, ground rules for fund-raising would have radically changed in Washington, where popular restaurants and bars around Capitol Hill sometimes host two or three events each night."