Surprise, surprise, the House Committee on Ethics announced this week that it would do... nothing.
The committee said it would take a pass on allegations that Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) inaccurately reported positions he had held and income he had received on his annual financial disclosure statements between 2007 and 2010.
The committee confirmed that Rep. Vern Buchanan had filed inaccurate financial forms, but said the omissions were inadvertant, no different from the “hundreds or thousands of errors” it sees each year in such reports.
What response did Buchanan, the GOP's top fundraiser, have to this:
He said the omissions amounted to chump change -- an interesting way to describe an amount roughly equivalent to one-third of the median annual income of families in his native Florida.
A letter from the congressman’s attorney said that the nearly $15,000 amounted to “somewhere between 0.0000434% and 0.00000962% of his total assets” -- noting the “small error relative to the size” of his holdings.Well, lucky him!!
Turns out his troubles may not be over. Even though NewsMax has decided that the Ethics Charges Are Politically Motivated, the House panel is continuing to investigate allegations that Buchanan once offered to pay a former business partner $2.9 million if he agreed to sign a false affidavit claiming he knew nothing about plans to reimburse employees of Buchanan’s car dealership. The FBI, Internal Revenue Service and a federal grand jury are conducting separate investigations.
