Charles Rangel Convicted of Violating House Rules

A veteran U.S. lawmaker has been convicted of violating ethics rules of the House of Representatives.

Democratic Representative Charles Rangel of New York was convicted Tuesday on 11 of 12 charges mostly related to financial misconduct.

The violations include failing to report income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic and improperly raising money for a college public policy center named in his honor.

The 80-year-old congressman was not present at a hearing of the House Ethics Committee panel deciding his fate. He walked out of a previous session Monday after complaining in his opening statement that he did not have a lawyer there to defend him.

The full Ethics Committee will now hold a hearing to determine an appropriate punishment for Rangel, which could include a fine or a formal rebuke. It will then make a recommendation on punishment to the full House.

The chair of the Ethics Committee panel, Democrat Zoe Lofgre, called this week’s hearing “difficult” but said she believes the bipartisan panel acted “with fairness.” The ranking Republican member, Michael McCaul, said he hopes the verdict will help “restore credibility” to the House of Representatives.

Rangel has served in the House for 40 years. Until earlier this year, he was chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee that oversees tax and trade policy.

He was first elected to Congress in 1970 from New York City’s Harlem district, a well-known African-American neighborhood, and he won re-election this month with up to 80 percent of the vote.

Another Democratic member of the House, Maxine Waters of California, is scheduled to go before the House ethics panel later this month for her own alleged ethics violations, including improperly helping a bank where her husband was an investor.

Some information in this story was provided by AP.