South Carolina – The House Ethics Committee is looking into claims against South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. This puts the member under the watchful eye of a bipartisan panel that keeps an eye on behavior in the U.S. House.
The committee stated on Friday that it is looking into a recommendation that the Office of Congressional Conduct sent late last year. This is an independent group that evaluates complaints against House members and staff before sending them on for further review.
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The Ethics Committee’s short statement did not say what the accusations were or what led to the referral. The group has to decide how it will move forward and make its proposals public by March 2, according to House rules.
The committee could choose to do nothing about the issue or start a formal investigation, but the committee provided no indication of which path it may take.
Mace’s spokesman answered questions about the committee’s activities by sending a letter from her lawyer to the Ethics Committee. The letter talks about claims about Mace’s accommodation costs and how she pays them back, which seem to be the main point of the referral. The lawmaker has denied any wrongdoing and has pushed back against the allegations since they became known.
The letter was written by William Sullivan Jr., a partner at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Sullivan asked the Office of Congressional Conduct about the sources of information they used in their review.
“[T]he referral appears to rely heavily on unverified materials originating from individuals with personal or adversarial motives, while leaving unanswered whether those individuals contributed to the information underlying the OCC’s analysis,” Sullivan wrote as reported by Politico.
Sullivan said that any material that came from Mace’s ex-partner should be taken with a grain of salt since it could be skewed because of personal or antagonistic reasons.
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A spokeswoman for Mace also pointed to a comment the congresswoman made in November, when she called the investigation an ‘act of retaliation’. Mace firmly denied the claims in that statement and stated she had followed the guidelines for costs and refunds.
The ethical assessment comes after Mace’s own recent work on House disciplinary matters. She had previously led a campaign to punish Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills for different ethical violations. That initiative failed in the end on the House floor after a dramatic and very public argument between the two lawmakers.
For now, the Ethics Committee has offered no further details, leaving both the scope of the allegations and the committee’s next steps unclear. The ruling, which is likely by early March, will decide if the case proceeds ahead or is brought to a close.
