FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010
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Politics & The Nation A11 Missing e-mail raises new questions in Waters ethics probe
Investigators delayed trial partly to see if more was withheld
BY CAROL D. LEONNIG AND R. JEFFREY SMITH
House ethics investigators
have begun a probe into why the chamber’s powerful Financial Services Committee did not fully comply with its promise to turn over all documents pertinent to an investigation of subcommittee chairman Maxine Waters (D-Ca- lif.), according to congressional staff members and other sources close to the inquiry. After wrapping up their ethics
investigation ofWaters this sum- mer and preparing for trial in October,theinvestigatorslearned about an e-mail that they consid- ered important to their examina- tion of her efforts to help a trou- bled bank tied to her husband. Four officials, congressional
staff members and others famil- iar with the probe confirmed on Thursday that her trial was post- poned two weeks ago in part to explore the delay in turning over that e-mail and to examine whether other evidencewaswith- held. The action is part of an overall broadening of theWaters inquiry by the committee to look more deeply at her office’s interactions with senior aides to the commit- tee’s chairman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), on legislation meanttohelpthebank,according to the sources. Some committee members are concerned that theWaters inves- tigative team did not have access to all the records, in part because they did not press for them dili-
Committee Chairman Barney Frank says he has ‘every reason to believe’ all relevant documents were delivered.
gently enough. Others on the staff have expressed concern that evi- dence may have been inappropri- ately withheld. The e-mail in question, sent by
Waters chief of staff Mikael Moore, asked four aides to Frank formoreinformationonthe prog- ress of legislationmeantto rescue large banks in the 2008 financial meltdown. The top aide, who is Waters’s grandson, proposed leg- islative wording changes that ul- timately ensured the minority- owned bank in which Waters’s husband had a financial invest- ment, OneUnited, received feder- al assistance. In August, the committee re-
leased a report stating that there was reason to believeWaters had acted improperly to help One- United, and that her actions gave the public reason to doubt her intregrity and objectivity. The committee’s investigation contin- ued, however.Waters has said she did nothing wrong and was only trying to assist all minority- owned banks. The e-mail surfaced because
investigators started interview- ing a former Frank aide, John Hughes, in September. They asked him at the time if he had any relevant documents, and he reported that he did not. But then they asked him in October to be a witness at Waters’s trial, and when he checked again for docu- ments, he found the e-mail and turned it over, according to a source close toHughes. Hughes, who now works for
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer(D-Md.), “hascompliedful- ly with the ethics committee’s re- quest for information related to his previous service,” said Hoyer spokeswoman Katie Grant. Frank has previously said he
inserted the legislative provision discussed in the e-mail partly to help OneUnited, which was then in grave financial trouble because of the abrupt devaluation of its stock in federally chartered mort- gage lenders. He fended off a potential ethics committee sub- poena of his panel and its staff, the sources said, by promising voluntary cooperation. The com- mittee later certified that it had turned over all relevant docu- ments. Frank said on Tuesday that the
concern about late-arriving docu- ments is news to him. “When I received the ethics
committee’s 2009 request, I in- structed my staff to turn over everydocumentin personal office
and committee files. I have every reason to believe they did that,” Frank said Thursday. The House ethics committee
did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. But deputy chief ethics counsel C. Morgan Kimandthree colleagues said in a memoto the committeemembers last month that they believe the e-mail “may have a material im- pact on the investigative subcom- mittee’s investigation and the re- sulting statement of alleged viola-
tions.” They suggested as a result that
the trial be postponed so that the special subcommittee appointed to investigate Waters could re- sume its work, a proposal that the sources said was accepted. The ethics committee has
made clear in its public charges that it considers the role ofMoore in the OneUnited matter critical in evaluatingwhetherWaters vio- lated House ethics rules. In the Sept. 28, 2008, e-mail, which he
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sent just two hours before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) unveiled the Troubled Assets Re- lief Program legislation, Moore insisted that he be kept apprised of “the status of the provisions that we have been working on” related to minority-owned banks. He alsosuggestedchangingthe wordingofthelegislation tomake clear it authorized “financial” as- sistance to such banks. Shortly after its approval, OneUnited ap- plied for and received a multimil-
lion-dollar loan, and bank regula- tors later said they approved the funds primarily because of that wording. Waters—themost senior black
lawmaker on the Financial Ser- vices Committee — has main- tained that she arranged a meet- ing for OneUnited with Treasury officials as part ofaneffort to help minority-ownedbanksingeneral. She told the ethics investigators that after the meeting, she re- moved herself from the effort to
help that particular bank, citing the conflict. But the four-member investi-
gative subcommittee found that Moore remained “actively in- volved in assisting OneUnited representatives with their re- quest for capital from Treasury.” Waters and Moore have both described his role as benign and, like her own efforts, aimed at helping all such banks.
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