{"id":1658,"date":"2015-08-26T12:30:21","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T12:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2015-08-27T12:48:57","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T12:48:57","slug":"watchdog-groups-call-on-ethics-committee-to-release-findings-in-azerbaijan-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1658","title":{"rendered":"Watchdog groups call on Ethics Committee to release findings in Azerbaijan case"},"content":{"rendered":"

By WILL TUCKER*
\nopensecrets.org<\/em><\/p>\n

Ten government watchdog groups have called on<\/a> House Ethics Committee Chair Charlie Dent<\/a> (R-Pa.) and Ranking Member Linda Sanchez<\/a> (D-Calif.) to release the Office of Congressional Ethics\u2019 findings regarding all-expense-paid trips to Azerbaijan taken by 10 members of Congress in 2013, according to a Wednesday press release. Earlier this month, the Ethics Committee dropped its own probe into the trips, cleared the lawmakers of wrongdoing and did not release the OCE\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n

\"Open<\/a>\u201cWe are concerned about the committee\u2019s unprecedented decision not to release the OCE\u2019s findings in circumstances where the Members under investigation remain\u201d in Congress, the groups\u2019 letter reads<\/a>. The Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Demand Progress, Democracy 21, Thomas Mann, the National Legal and Policy Center, Norm Ornstein, Public Citizen, and James Thurber all signed the letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision is especially concerning because the Committee itself played a decisive role in approving the Members\u2019 travel to Azerbaijan,\u201d the authors wrote. The groups also raised questions about whether Dent should have recused himself from the matter after receiving contributions<\/a> from individuals associated with the nonprofit network under investigation in May. OpenSecrets Blog broke the story of the contributions to Dent.<\/p>\n

The Ethics Committee must approve a lawmaker\u2019s travel beforehand when a nonprofit group offers to foot the bill. Each member who went to Azerbaijan in May 2013 \u2014 Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee<\/a> (D-Texas), Gregory Meeks<\/a> (D-N.Y.), Yvette Clarke<\/a> (D-N.Y.), Ted Poe<\/a> (R-Texas), Jim Bridenstine<\/a> (R-Okla.), Leonard Lance<\/a> (R-N.J.), Danny Davis<\/a> (D-Ill.), Ruben Hinojosa<\/a> (D-Texas), Michelle Lujan Grisham<\/a> (D-N.M.) and then-Rep. Steve Stockman<\/a>, (R-Texas) \u2014 was cleared by the Ethics Committee to attend an energy conference in Baku, the Eurasian nation\u2019s oil-rich capital.
\nIf the OCE investigated why the Ethics panel approved such a trip, that information might be in findings Ethics is withholding, said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center \u2014 and if that\u2019s the case, \u201cit\u2019s pretty important to know why the committee screwed up so badly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On the forms they submitted to the Ethics Committee for approval, the lawmakers\u2019 sponsors did not indicate that the convention was funded by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan and BP, among others.<\/p>\n

The Houston Chronicle uncovered the connections between the convention\u2019s organizers and the oil companies in an investigative report<\/a> last summer. OCE found $750,000 in payments from the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, or SOCAR, to the U.S.-based Turkic non-profits claiming to solely sponsor the trips, according to a Washington Post account<\/a> of OCE\u2019s report on the matter leaked to the newspaper.<\/p>\n

The OCE itself, an independent ethics watchdog created by Congress, cannot adjudicate cases and can\u2019t subpoena witnesses or documents<\/a>. It can investigate allegations, interview witnesses and then refer cases to the Ethics Committee for review. But as OCE investigators carried out their probe into the Azerbaijan convention, they were ordered by the Ethics Committee to \u201ccease and refer,\u201d or stop and send the case straight to Ethics. The reason given for the order was that Ethics was conducting its own investigation.<\/p>\n

In a press release<\/a> after terminating the matter, the committee said it had reviewed \u201capproximately 10,000 pages\u201d of documents collected by the OCE and that it will hand over some materials, including bank records, to the Justice Department for review. Those materials, however, all are connected to third parties in the case \u2014 for instance, some of the companies involved \u2014 and do not centrally involve conduct by the lawmakers on the trip.<\/p>\n

Instead of releasing the OCE\u2019s findings to the public\u2013 as it has in other cases \u2014 the committee called the findings \u201csupporting documentation\u201d and declined to release them, according to the press release.That\u2019s a problem, the watchdog groups claim in their letter, in part because the findings might shed light on the Ethics Committee\u2019s \u201ccease and refer\u201d order. That order may not have been valid, according to the groups, and \u201ccould establish a dangerous precedent that would allow the Ethics Committee to order the OCE, a supposedly independent body, to \u2018cease and refer\u2019 at any time, regardless whether the Committee meets the legal conditions for such an extraordinary order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Rust, a spokesman for the Ethics Committee, had no comment about the letter.<\/p>\n

\n

*Will Tucker joined the Center in May 2015 as the money-in-politics reporter for OpenSecrets.org. Previously, he spent two years as an investigative reporter for Hearst Newspapers in the company’s Washington, D.C. bureau, investigating members of Congress for the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News and other Hearst newspapers. He graduated in 2013 from the University of Alabama with a degree in international relations and was the editor-in-chief of The Crimson White, UA’s student newspaper.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By WILL TUCKER* opensecrets.org Ten government watchdog groups have called on House Ethics Committee Chair Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and Ranking Member Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) to [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-region","category-azerbaijan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1660,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions\/1660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}