3 Accordingly, when the Senate and House versions of the Ethics Act came out of conference, all criminal penalites had been deleted. After passage of the Ethics Act, however, federal prosecutors have attempted to impose criminal sanctions on certain persons for alleged violations of the Act. The Justice Department recognizes that the Ethics Act itself calls for only a civil penalty, but federal prosecutors have attempted to get around that hurdle by instituting criminal proceedings under the general fraud statute found at 18 U.S.C. Section 1001. By so doing, the federal prosecutors have circumvented congressional intent. On at least 2 occasions to date, criminal convictions have been obtained against public officials for allegedly failing to declare pertinent financial information on disclosure forms, without any accompanying charge of bribery, conflict of interest, fraud, deceit, or any other criminal wrongdoing of any kind. Other cases have been unsuccessfully brought, such as a recent action in federal court in Los Angeles against former assistant Navy secretary George A. Sawyer for allegedly making false statements on his financial disclosure forms by failing to disclose $833.00 in travel expenses paid by a St. Louis company with whom he had been interviewing for possible employment. The case against former Idaho Congressman George Hansen is especially disturbing. Representative Hansen was charged criminally with several counts of failing to disclose certain transactions carried out entirely by his wife and in her name. No fraud or bribery claim of any kind was made, yet Mr. Hansen was convicted for nothing more than his failure to disclose, and he is now serving time in a federal jail. It is also significant to note that Mr. Hansen was defeated for re-election by less than 100 votes, a defeat no doubt spawned by the criminal charges themselves. We in this body are all subject to the Ethics Act and I am confident that we all seek to faithfully comply with the Act's terms and provisions. If the information we thereby disseminate results in our being defeated at the polls or in some other disapproval by our constituencies, that is one thing, but the paperwork requirements themselves should not carry criminal penalties and thereby grant Justice Department attorneys an additional source of power against those subject to the terms of the Act. To give the prosecutors that kind of leverage would be unwise and possibly very dangerous. There are already specific provisions of the United States Code upon which federal prosecutors may seek criminal indictments for bribery or related offenses. They do not need this further prosecutorial tool which was never intended to be created in the first place. 5 Ever since this great constitutional form of government of ours was created, we in the Congress of the United States have been proud of our ability to responsibly take care of our own affairs. We should not so neglectfully send that responsibility to the executive and judicial branches, where political decisions to prosecute and convict will by their very nature be forever present. The doctrine of separation of powers should not be so callously ignored. The lines between the legislative and executive and judicial branches have been blurred enough in recent times. We should not blur them further by giving federal prosecutors carte blanche to bring criminal cases against anyone who may not have filled out his or her financial disclosure form exactly right. This bill has also been introduced in the House of Representatives, where it has widespread support among the leadership and both political parties. Perhaps due to the close association of the House with recent cases involving this issue, such as the Hansen case, and the frequent mention in the press of the possibility of a similar action against former Representative Geraldine Ferraro, the House is more attuned than we are to the serious ramifications of the Ethics Act's sanctions as they are presently being misinterpreted by the federal courts. |