Capitol Hill ethics purge set to spare deputies. corey mills – at least for now.
Pressure on representatives. Tony Gonzales And Eric Swalwell The resignations Tuesday amid serious sexual harassment allegations from former staffers showed there are few limits to what lawmakers will tolerate from their colleagues. And Mills, a Florida Republican, has been under investigation for months for allegedly breaking campaign finance rules and threatening to release a nude video of an ex.
“He should be expelled,” Rep. susie lee (D-Nev.) said in an interview Tuesday.
But prominent leaders of both parties and several rank-and-file members indicated this week that they would wait for the conclusion of the House Ethics Committee’s active investigation into Mills before punishing him. That would include House Republicans protecting Mills from being expelled — a lawmaker could force an expulsion vote as soon as next week — until the panel issues a final report on its findings — which could come at any time — according to three Republicans granted anonymity to share the private conversations.
Democratic Caucus Chair pete aguilar California said in an interview Tuesday that it had not yet considered its position on Mills’s expulsion; minority leader Hakeem Jeffries The New York president told reporters he would wait to talk to his members before considering the matter. Several members who left Tuesday’s House Democratic leadership meeting also said they did not yet know the party’s strategy to address the effort to remove Mills.
Also, Democrats have given no indication they plan to fight Republican plans to force a vote next week on a proposal to expel another Florida lawmaker, a Democrat. Representative Sheila Cherfilas-McCormick. The Ethics Committee will meet Tuesday to recommend formal punishment after finding him guilty last month of more than two dozen counts ranging from campaign finance violations to stealing money from FEMA. He has maintained his innocence.
This has made Mills feel emboldened. He said in an interview on Tuesday that he told the speaker mike johnson He was “falsely implicated in this” along with Swalwell and Gonzales, as well as Cherfilas-McCormick. Unlike Cherfilas-McCormick, he is not subject to federal indictment. Also unlike Swalwell and Gonzales, he is not facing an allegation of an inappropriate relationship with an employee – which Mills has admitted to Johnson.
He said, “If the metric for expulsion” were the investigation being conducted only by the House Ethics Committee, “wouldn’t many people throughout this House be expelled for the idea of being investigated?”
The move to remove Mills, but not Cherfilas-McCormick, is a clear sign that House members are content to defer to the notoriously slow, notoriously secretive House ethics process — even as they face national support for faster accountability for allegedly illegal and inappropriate conduct on Capitol Hill. The dynamic has become so strong that internal and external pressure campaigns, such as those against Texas Republican Gonzales and California Democrat Swalwell, appear to be faster mechanisms for removing lawmakers from office than formal expulsion votes.
“I have a three-part test – has the member admitted the conduct in question? Has a court made any findings? Or has the Ethics Committee made any findings?” The representative said. Nick LaLotta (R-N.Y.), who led the successful impeachment of former New York Republican Representative George Santos in 2023 for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. “I don’t think the Mills case meets any of those three criteria.”
After all, House members of both parties have argued that they can regulate themselves through bureaucratic, internal processes. Members can quickly separate of their own free will – as was the case with Swalwell and Gonzalez this week – or they can continue serving for months, if not years, until their cases are resolved.
“You’re innocent until proven guilty, and they should go through the ethics committee, and if they’re guilty, there should be a proper censure or perhaps expulsion if it’s serious enough,” the representative said. Jeff Van Drew (RNJ) in an interview on Tuesday.
Van Drew was also skeptical of rumors that Democrats might substitute Mills’ ouster for Cherfilus-McCormick.
“There are people on both the Democrat side and the Republican side who are so angry at the other political party that they are bent on causing bloodshed,” he said. “So I think they’re both in the same boat. I don’t think there’s a prisoner exchange going on here.”
Mills said in a Tuesday interview that he has confidence in the ethics process, though it’s unclear where the ethics committee stands with its investigation of the lawmaker. Johnson told reporters on Tuesday he was “looking into it.”
But Republicans have been quietly concerned about the emerging allegations against Mills for some time. The GOP’s narrow House majority complicates the prospect of engaging in any kind of accountability of leadership — regardless of the ethical process — and the loss of Mills’ seat could jeopardize passing legislation needed to tilt the scales ever so slightly in the Democrats’ favor.
That hasn’t stopped at least one Republican representative. nancy mace Of South Carolina, by campaigning for the Count of Mills. He tried unsuccessfully to censure Mills for alleged irregularities, including omissions or misrepresentations in his financial disclosures; violations of campaign finance rules; illegal involvement in federal contracts while in office; And stolen bravery.
“Any member of Congress engaging in illegal activity or violating House rules, I will vote to expel,” the representative said. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).
But several lawmakers — Republican and Democrat — said Tuesday they want to see the Mills ethics investigation fully completed before supporting his removal.
“If there are expulsion votes, if they’re political, I’m not interested,” said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), chairman of the centrist New Democrat coalition. “If they are based on facts established by process, I will follow the facts.”
Meredith Lee Hill and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
