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| Sen. David Vitter (R) of Louisiana admitted to a "serious sin" after his name was linked to a Washington escort service last
month. Lee Celano/Reuters/file |
Senate Republicans draw bright line with Craig scandal
The Idaho senator pleaded guilty, while other senators who are under investigation have not been charged with wrongdoing, said GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the September 7, 2007 edition
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Washington - While the US Senate is known for its endless deliberations, you wouldn't know it from an unusually swift response to Sen. Larry Craig's legal woes.
Within hours of the announcement that the three-term Idaho Republican had pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct in a solicitation case last June, Senate Republican leaders called for an ethics probe – and, unusually, announced they were doing so.
Soon after, they also asked Senator Craig to give up his ranking member leadership positions on committee assignments. GOP caucus rules provide for this step only after a felony conviction. And they urged, rather than requested, Craig to resign.
When an attorney for Senator Craig appealed to the committee to conclude that there is no precedent for asserting jurisdiction over such conduct, the committee fired off a response the same day that the investigation would go forward.
"I would highly doubt they had even read [Craig attorney] Stan Brand's argument on behalf of Senator Craig before they wrote that letter," says Craig spokesman Dan Whiting, in a statement to the Monitor.
"We agree that the ethics committee has under the rules broad discretion in the cases it can review, but the argument here is that they should not start reviewing senators based on misdemeanor charges unrelated to their official duties. That would open a huge Pandora's box."
The swift move to closure in the Craig case is a sharp contrast to the tack that Republican leaders have taken with two other GOP senators recently caught up in investigations of wrongdoing.
Sen. David Vitter (R) of Louisiana was applauded by his Republican colleagues when he returned to a caucus meeting after admitting he made phone calls to a prostitute service. Sen. Ted Stevens (R) of Alaska, whose home was recently searched in a federal corruption investigation, appealed to his colleagues to wait until the probe was complete before rushing to judgment – and his colleagues on both sides of the aisle have respected that request.
Attempting to draw a bright line explaining such differences, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters this week that the difference is that Craig pleaded guilty, while Senator Stevens is still under investigation and Senator Vitter has not been charged with a crime.
A leading ethics watchdog group calls that standard disingenuous. "It's a very fine point to say that one person pleaded guilty to a low-level sexual misconduct crime and another didn't get charged, when both have admitted to crimes," says Melanie Sloan, executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
"Just because [Vitter's] conduct seemed to be too long ago to get charged, the underlying conduct is the same. We're just talking about the venue in which they admitted it," she adds.
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