Ethics Panel Urges $300,000 Fine, Reprimand for Gingrich

WASHINGTON — A House Ethics panel recommended imposing a $300,000 financial penalty and a formal reprimand on House Speaker Newt Gingrich for ethical lapses that were detailed in public for the first time in a nationally televised hearing Friday.

The punishment, recommended by the investigative subcommittee of the House Ethics Committee, was a humbling blow in the Georgia Republican’s two-year reign as House speaker. Gingrich’s lawyer told the committee that Gingrich would accept the punishment.

The committee’s long-awaited public hearing, which lasted just under six hours, presented a tougher view of the charges against Gingrich than was portrayed when he admitted last month that he had submitted false information to committee investigators and had failed to obtain adequate legal advice about using funds from a nonprofit foundation to support a college course he taught which advanced his political agenda.

“Over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities,” said James M. Cole, special counsel to the House committee. “Either Mr. Gingrich’s conduct . . . was intentional or it was reckless.”

The Ethics Committee, an eight-member panel evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, was expected to vote on its subcommittee’s recommendation late Friday and send it to the full House for a vote Tuesday.

If approved by the House, the punishment would allow Gingrich to continue as speaker. That would represent a victory for Republicans who have mounted an extraordinary drive to bring the ethics investigation to a close and keep it from toppling Gingrich from leadership.

Even so, the punishment would put an unparalleled stain on his speakership, marking the first time in history that a speaker has been formally reprimanded by the House.

Ethics Committee Chairwoman Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.) called the proposed punishment “tough and unprecedented.”

“Today is a sad day,” said Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), a member of the committee.

Gingrich’s lawyers did not fight the recommendation that he be penalized and reprimanded, instead endorsing the punishment as an appropriate sanction.

“The speaker recognizes the seriousness of the charges,” said Randolph Evans, Gingrich’s lawyer. “Any charge against a speaker is indeed a serious matter.”

The panel did not refer the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation but it did make plain that its documentation on tax matters would be made available to the Internal Revenue Service.

Cole said that the recommended sanction represented an effort to strike a middle ground between a reprimand, the lightest of the three formal punishments traditionally considered by the committee, and censure, which would have forced Gingrich to step down from the speakership. The penalty of $300,000 was levied as a “reimbursement” to the House for the cost of the investigation, which Cole said took longer because Gingrich had given the committee inaccurate information.

Gingrich may not have to dip into his own pockets to pay the penalty, a Gingrich aide said, because there is legal precedent for such payments coming from political funds. But other lawyers said that the issue was unclear.

Cole was not asked directly whether the speaker would have to pay the fine out of his own pocket. But he did tell the committee that Gingrich “should make sure he pays it in an ethical manner. If he doesn’t, there’s a chance we might be back here.”

The public hearing and the release of Cole’s report marked the culmination of a two-year investigation that centered on “Renewing American Civilization,” a college course Gingrich taught in 1993-95 that was supported financially by nonprofit foundations. At issue was whether Gingrich improperly used charitable enterprises to advance his partisan agenda.

The ethics panel’s four-person investigative subcommittee issued a 22-page document in December announcing it had found--and Gingrich had admitted--that he submitted documents falsely claiming that GOPAC, his political action committee, had no role in the course. In fact, the group was heavily involved in designing the course and raising funds for it.

In addition, the panel chided Gingrich for failing to get adequate legal advice to ensure that the course complied with federal tax laws prohibiting the use of tax exempt contributions for partisan purposes.

But it was not until Friday’s hearing that the subcommittee officially reported its recommended punishment.

Although Friday’s proceedings provided more detail than the December report, they provided far less exposure to the case than Democrats had hoped and Republicans had feared.

Initial plans had called for five days or more of televised hearings but Republicans unilaterally postponed the hearings after Democrats complained that Cole’s report would not have been available. The GOP refused to budge on its commitment to bring the matter to a vote by Tuesday.

The hearing, in a stuffy but ornate House hearing room, was marked by a tone of decorum and comity that has been sorely lacking in recent days, as the case was buffeted by bitter partisan disputes.

Still, the report and public hearing made plain that the subcommittee had been deeply divided over key points. Cole had sided with Democrats in a harsher judgment than their GOP colleagues. Cole said that initially he had proposed charging Gingrich with violation of tax law and was skeptical of claims that Gingrich did not intend to mislead the committee.

“A good argument could be made, based on the record, that Mr. Gingrich did act intentionally,” Cole said. He said, however, “It would be difficult to establish this . . . with a high degree of certainty.”

Cole said the subcommittee initially was going to charge that Gingrich had given information to the committee about GOPAC’s involvement that he “knew or should have known” was inaccurate. But the panel changed the charge in negotiations with Gingrich and his attorneys. Gingrich said that he would admit to the violations if the subcommittee said only that he “should have known” it was inaccurate.

The false information was contained in two documents submitted to the committee which denied that GOPAC had any involvement in the college course. Gingrich’s lawyer said the speaker did not intend to mislead the committee and, as evidence, he noted that Gingrich acknowledged GOPAC’s role in other submissions to the committee.

“GOPAC’s involvement was clearly and unequivocally known throughout the process,” Evans, the Gingrich’s lawyer, told the committee. He cited, among other instances, a letter to the committee saying that people working on the course would be paid by GOPAC. “There is no evidence . . . that there was any intent or attempt to submit inaccurate information to this committee.”

But Cole and Democrats were skeptical. Cole said the letter citing GOPACs role in paying people working on the course was “of little value” because it was not written in response to specific questions about GOPAC’s role. When the committee focused his question on that issue, Cole said, “his response was not accurate.”

Cardin raised further questions about Gingrich’s intent by releasing memos from his political advisors that he said showed Republicans had launched an organized effort “to disrupt the committee’s work.” The memo suggested strategies such as attacking President Clinton’s ethics to “get House [Democrats] to back down.”

Cardin said that memo “raises serious questions as to how far Mr. Gingrich . . . would go in order to improperly influence the ethics process.”

The other main area of inquiry was whether Gingrich improperly used funds raised by a nonprofit organization for political purposes in the college course, which was largely financed by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, and a series of televised workshops, which were financed first by GOPAC and then by the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Society.

The subcommittee concluded that the course and workshops were, in fact, part and parcel of Gingrich’s political aims of winning Republican control of Congress. “In both instances there was an effort to have the material appear to be nonpartisan on its face, yet serve as a partisan, political message for the purpose of building the Republican Party,” Cole told the subcommittee.

But the panel did not conclude that he had violated tax law, only that he had failed to seek adequate legal advice to ensure that the course was in compliance. Cole and the report made plain that the subcommittee was divided on the question. Cole and the Democrats thought it was a violation of tax law but GOP members did not want to come to that conclusion because tax experts were divided on the issue.

“If the law was unclear, there is no way the speaker could have understood what the law was and intended to violate it,” Evans said. And he cited other political groups and members of Congress who, like Gingrich, were linked to nonprofit organizations that are associated with political groups.

Cole also said that the subcommittee concluded Gingrich had violated an agreement he reached with the panel not to publicly discuss the case after the charges were announced in December. He said news media accounts describing elements of the agreement, attributed to GOP sources, “indicated that Mr. Gingrich had violated the agreement.”

Even before the hearing was over, the political war over its implications began. House Democrats called a series of press conferences calling on Gingrich to step down as speaker.

“The speaker of the House must put the institution of Congress ahead of his personal and his party’s ambitions and step aside,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento).

But House Republican leaders faxed “talking points” to its rank and file for defending Gingrich in the crucial days between now and Tuesday’s House vote. “All of us can expect a lot of hot rhetoric and gross exaggeration in the next few days,” the talking points said.

Times staff writer Sam Fulwood III and researcher D’Jamila Salem-Fitzgerald contributed to this story.