When the House Ethics Committee tried to cover the crimes of a Democratic Speaker

The House is in the middle of what feels like an unprecedented reckoning. Former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) faces allegations of rape and sexual misconduct from multiple women. Former Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) admitted to an affair with a staffer who later killed herself.

An Ethics panel found former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) guilty of 25 ethics charges stemming from allegations $5 million in COVID relief funds were funneled into her own campaign. Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) faces allegations ranging from domestic abuse to financial misconduct.

Swalwell, Gonzales and Cherfilus-McCormick have already resigned, ducking what would likely have been unceremonious expulsions. With the Ethics Committee set to recommend sanctions for Mills (still under investigation), the upheaval is far from over. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he would “exact punishment” on “predators” in Congress.

Members in both parties are calling it a crisis. They’re right, but it’s not the first one.

I know, because I was 23 years old and white as a sheet, standing outside a congressional office reading a prepared statement into television cameras, when the first one happened.

In 1987, I was the 23-year-old press secretary for Rep. Austin Murphy of Pennsylvania, likely the youngest press secretary on the Hill at the time, and almost certainly the one dealing with the most drama. I was summoned from the district office to help handle press, and I had no idea what I was doing — thrown into the proverbial pool without knowing how to swim.

The House Ethics Committee had just voted to reprimand the congressman for a series of violations: diverting congressional property to his former law firm,........

© The Hill