Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who is vying to take over the Democratic National Committee, criticized his Republican House colleagues on Tuesday over a proposal to scrap the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), an independent congressional watchdog.
But Ellison’s critique, which he offered on Twitter, is rife with hypocrisy. That’s because in 2010, Ellison was one of 20 Congressional Black Caucus members to co-sponsor a bill that would have severely restricted OCE’s investigative capabilities.
House Republicans faced a massive public outcry on Tuesday after a majority of the caucus voted in favor of a rule that would have scrapped OCE. The rule, which was ultimately tabled, would have also prohibited investigations from relying on anonymous sources.
A 2010 bill proposed by Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, a Congressional Black Caucus member, would have had a similar effect on OCE.
As The New York Times reported at the time, the bill would have “prohibit[ed] the release of most investigative reports prepared by the Office of Congressional Ethics. It would also prevent the office from initiating its own inquiries, unless a sworn complaint was filed by an individual with personal knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing.”
Keith Ellison co-sponsored bill to roll back Office of Congressional Ethics (Congress.gov)
Fudge said that OCE, which was formed in 2008 by California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, had opened frivolous investigations into Congressional Black Caucus members.
“O.C.E. is currently the accuser, judge and jury. This isn’t the case in the American justice system, and it shouldn’t be so in Congress,” Fudge said at the time.
“This will gut and render impotent the Office of Congressional Ethics,” Norman Ornstein, an ethics expert, told The Times in 2010.
Ellison, who is Muslim, has been the subject of at least one House ethics investigation, though not by OCE. The House Ethics Committee investigated Ellison for failing to disclose a trip he took in 2008 to Mecca, the Muslim holy land. (RELATED: Keith Ellison Failed To Disclose Group Tied To Muslim Brotherhood Paid For Mecca Trip)
The Muslim American Society, an Islamist group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, paid $13,500 for Ellison’s trip.
Ellison has hopes of taking over as chair of the DNC. But he faces an uphill battle because of some of his past remarks criticizing Israel and for his ties to Islamist extremists.
[h/t NTK Network]