Ethics Report Declines to Punish McDermott for Leaks

11 Dec 2006 // The House ethics committee has decided not to punish Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) for leaking to the media in 1997 a tape of an illegally intercepted phone call between GOP leaders, although the panel did find his actions were “inconsistent with the spirit of the applicable rules and represented a failure on his part to meet his obligations” as the ranking member of the committee.

The committee, in a report formally released on Monday, found that McDermott “risked undermining the ethics process” by giving the tape to reporters.

During the Dec. 21, 1996, call, Republican leaders plotted strategies for handling an ethics case against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who was being investigated by the panel for improper use of Congressional staff and several nonprofit groups. A Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, who recorded the conversation, provided McDermott with a copy of the tape in early January 1997. The Martins later pleaded guilty to improperly intercepting the call.

McDermott claimed that he leaked the tape to The New York Times and other newspapers because he thought Gingrich had violated an agreement with the ethics panel by orchestrating a response to its findings.

But an investigative subcommittee led by Reps. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) said McDermott should have given the tape to the ethics committee rather than leaking it.

“A better course of actions would have been for Representative McDermott to entrust the Committee at the outset with the information to which he alone on the Committee had access, and for that body, collectively, to make determinations, consistent with its rules, as it deemed appropriate,” the investigative panel said in its report.

In a statement released by his office on Monday afternoon, McDermott downplayed the ethics committee’s criticism of his actions.

“I am pleased with the conclusion reached by the Investigative Subcommittee of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which said in a report released today that I did not violate any House rules,” McDermott said.

McDermott also still faces a court case that has already cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees related to the tape.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments on Jan. 25 in a lawsuit brought against McDermott by House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who was one of the Republican leaders taking part in the 1996 phone conversation. Boehner was on a mobile phone in Florida when the call took place, and he sued McDermott for knowingly disclosing an unlawfully intercepted conversation.

Earlier this year, a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled against McDermott, ordering him to pay Boehner $60,000 in damages as well as cover any of Boehner’s “reasonable” attorneys’ fees, which are well over $500,000.

McDermott has sought to have Boehner’s case dismissed on First Amendment grounds, arguing that the public’s right to know outweighed Boehner’s right to privacy, and a number of news organizations have sided with the Washington state Democrat in the case. The House ethics investigative subcommittee declined to weigh in on that issue.

“I am also pleased with the committee’s acknowledgment that pending litigation in the federal court will decide the question of law over the First Amendment issues involved,” McDermott said.

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