Waters Wants Answers

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is calling on the ethics committee to explain why it placed the two attorneys handling her case on administrative leave the same day it delayed her public trial.

“It appears that we now know the real reason for the delay: Something has gone wrong in the ethics process,” she said in a lengthy statement issued late Wednesday afternoon.

She also called into the question the panel’s integrity and argued the investigative process had been compromised.

“We don’t know the specifics, but we know that the integrity of the committee and its investigative process have been compromised,” she said. “The longer the committee withholds the details of its actions, the more the public’s confidence in the House ethics process is eroded.”

Cindy Morgan Kim, the deputy chief counsel and lead attorney on the Waters case, and Stacy Sovereign, who supplemented Kim on the case, were placed on administrative leave the same day Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who chairs the panel, and Jo Bonner (R-Ala.), its ranking member, announced an indefinite delay of Waters's public trial, which was set to begin Nov. 29.

The action could sound the death knell for the Waters’s case. It no doubt gives her leverage to achieve a reduced penalty if not a dismissal of the case.

Waters’s wasted little time in seizing on the news and said she has long been concerned about the committee’s unsupported conclusions, often contradictory arguments and unfounded negative references.

“It now seems that these concerns were justified, as the committee’s sanctioning of its own attorneys is an acknowledgement of flaws and failures in the Committee’s processes and handling of my case,” she said.

“The committee must reveal immediately the circumstances that prompted its action. Transparency is of the utmost importance at this critical moment.

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