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

WASHINGTON —  Proposing an unprecedented punishment for a speaker, the House Ethics Committee voted Friday to impose a $300,000 financial penalty and formal reprimand on Rep. Newt Gingrich for ethical lapses that were either “intentional . . . or reckless.”

The 7-1 vote was a humbling blow to the Georgia Republican’s two-year reign as speaker.

“This is a tough penalty,” said House Ethics Committee Chairman Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.). “I believe it is an appropriate penalty. It demonstrates that no one is above the rules.” The dissenting vote on the committee was cast by a Republican member who thought the punishment was too harsh.

The vote came after James M. Cole, the committee’s special counsel who recommended the punishment, presented a tougher view of the charges than was portrayed last month, when Gingrich admitted that he had given false information to the committee and failed to ensure that a college course he taught complied with tax laws. Gingrich insisted that the violations were not intentional.

“The violation does not represent only a single instance of reckless conduct,” Cole said in a nationally televised public hearing. “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.”

Cole said he had initially concluded that Gingrich had violated tax law and was skeptical of the speaker’s claims that he did not intend to mislead the committee--and the two Democrats on the four-person subcommittee that drew up the charges seemed to agree. The charges were watered down, however, in negotiations with Republicans and Gingrich in an effort by the subcommittee to bring a unanimous, bipartisan recommendation to the full Ethics Committee.

If approved by the House when it votes Tuesday, the punishment would allow Gingrich to continue as speaker. That would represent a victory for Republicans who have mounted an extraordinary drive to end the ethics investigation 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.

“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 did make plain that documents on tax matters would be made available to the Internal Revenue Service.

Cole said 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 his advisors believe there is legal precedent for such payments coming from political funds. But other lawyers said the issue was unclear.

Cole was not asked directly whether the speaker would have to pay the fine himself. 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 only dissenting member of the Ethics Committee was Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who said that “there appears to be no precedent for a reprimand” in cases where lapses like Gingrich’s are unintentional.

Even before the hearing was over, the political war concerning its implications began. House Democrats held 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 California Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento).

But House Republican leaders faxed “talking points” to its rank and file to help them defend Gingrich in the crucial days before the House vote Tuesday. “All of us can expect a lot of hot rhetoric and gross exaggeration in the next few days,” the talking points said.

The public hearing, which lasted about 5 1/2 hours, marked the culmination of a two-year investigation that centered on “Renewing American Civilization,” a college course Gingrich taught from 1993 to 1995 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 investigative subcommittee issued a 22-page document in December announcing it had found--and Gingrich had admitted--that he had 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 and released the subcommittee’s 213-page report on the investigation.

Although Friday’s proceedings provided more detail than the December report, they gave 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 proceedings after Democrats complained that Cole’s report would not have been available for the hearings. 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 has been 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.

“A good argument could be made, based on the record, that Mr. Gingrich did act intentionally,” Cole said. He acknowledged, 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 he would admit to the violations if the subcommittee said only that he “should have known” the information was inaccurate.

The false information was contained in two documents submitted to the committee denying 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 had acknowledged GOPAC’s role in other submissions to the committee.

“GOPAC’s involvement was clearly and unequivocally known throughout the process,” Evans, 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,” Evans said.

But 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 on that issue, Cole said, “his response was not accurate.”

Cardin raised further questions about Gingrich’s intent by releasing memos from the speaker’s 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 & 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. But the subcommittee 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. The hearings 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 that Gingrich had violated an agreement he had reached with the panel not to publicly discuss the case after the charges were announced in December.

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