Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Friday, July 19, 2002

The House ethics committee Thursday night unanimously recommended Traficant be expelled from Congress. If two-thirds of the full House agrees, he will become only the second congressman booted since the Civil War.

"If I am to be expelled under these circumstances, then God save the republic and God save the Constitution," he told reporters earlier in the day.

The flamboyant Ohio Democrat stoutly maintained his innocence and bitterly argued that he was being railroaded. He even vowed to run for re-election from a jail cell.

Traficant is guilty of House ethics violations because of his convictions in criminal court for bribery, tax evasion and racketeering, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct decided in a private vote earlier Thursday.

Traficant has complained he has been the victim of a government vendetta since he beat the FBI in a bribery case 20 years ago, when he was sheriff of Mahoning County. His victory in that case helped propel him to Congress in 1984.

The House committee allowed the congressman to bring on a witness whose testimony was not allowed by the judge in his recent trial. The judge dismissed it as "a stunt.”

Richard Detore, a former CEO of U.S. Aerospace Group, told lawmakers that prosecutors tried to pressure him to lie about Traficant so they could convict the Ohio Democrat.

"Did you and I conspire to break any laws in regard to U.S. Aerospace?” Traficant asked.

"No, we did not,” Detore testified Wednesday.

A curious angle to Detore’s involvement is that he himself faces a Nov. 13 bribery trial involving U.S. Aerospace. It would be tempting for him to plea bargain his way out of that by helping prosecutors nail a congressman. But instead, he is sticking with Traficant.

Janet Reno's Involvement

In riveting testimony before the House panel deciding whether to expel Traficant, Detore recounted how federal prosecutors told him that Janet Reno and high Clinton administration officials were determined to nail Traficant.

Traficant had been a thorn in the side of the administration for years. He raised issues on the House floor about the Clinton administration's handling of the TWA Flight 800 matter, Waco, the death of Vince Foster and bribes by the Chinese government.

Detore said prosecutors wanted him to lie about Traficant, and even threatened to use the IRS against him.

No one can know for certain whether Traficant has in fact been nailed on false charges. But if that is the case, there is precedent for it.

Twenty years ago, Congress was rocked by what was called the Abscam scandal. FBI agents posed as Arab sheiks offering big bucks to lawmakers for legislative favors. Though this approach was subsequently criticized as "entrapment,” it did in fact catch several lawmakers in the act of accepting a bribe. Most of them were guilty as sin and went to jail.

The only House member ousted since the Civil War, Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa., was expelled in 1980 because of Abscam.

One lawmaker, Sen. Harrison "Pete” Williams, D-N.J., ended up resigning and was convicted on what he – and many disinterested observers – maintained was flimsy circumstantial evidence. Investigators, for example, came back to him no less than seven times trying to lure him into taking a bribe. There was no clear-cut "gotcha” in the Williams case, just circumstantial evidence that could have been interpreted either way.

The case was so weak that the left-wing Williams was defended by a leading conservative cleric, the Rev. Carl MacIntyre, a constituent from Collingwood, N.J.

But the senator went to jail just the same.

Sending a congressman or senator to jail can be a feather in the cap of any prosecutor or law enforcement officer. That is the point that Congressman Traficant is making now.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Clinton Scandals

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