Complaint Filed Against Rep. McDermott

WASHINGTON -- An Ohio congressman has filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., adding a new twist to a seven-year-old dispute over an illegally taped telephone conversation that McDermott leaked to reporters.

Rep. Dave Hobson, R-Ohio, filed the complaint, based in large part on an October court ruling that found McDermott should pay Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, more than $600,000 for leaking the taped conversation in 1997. Under House rules, the ethics committee will have to review the complaint when the 109th Congress convenes in January.

The complaint comes as McDermott announced he is appealing that ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan that the congressman's "willful and knowing misconduct rises to the level of malice."

"The federal court case to which this complaint refers at such length is far from finished," McDermott said, adding, "It is now on appeal. We expect the result to be very different" from the October ruling.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-mcdermott-ethics,0,2827787.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

district, which happens to be mine!
The only way they'll ever dislodge him is through dirty tricks, or if he chooses to retire, God forbid.

What about the fact it was a year and/or so ago?

Well of course, hes a Republican. He gets off scot free so he can put our national security at risk and ruin another family's safety like the Plames.

Below is the story about why McDermott is up on these charges. Notice, he was just the messenger, but somehow it all got turned on him. Could it be because US District Judge Thomas F. Hogan was appointed by Reagan and is a Republican? Nothing is being done about the information on the tape, but instead McDermott is suffering for delivering the message. Here's the story.

Boehner was on vacation with his family and spoke on a cellular phone during the Dec. 21, 1996, conference call. A Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, said they unexpectedly intercepted the call on a police scanner and decided to tape it because the conversation was intriguing.
In January 1997, the Martins traveled to Capitol Hill with a copy of the tape, making their way through a crowded hallway filled with reporters and cameras just outside the basement office of the House ethics committee and asking to speak with McDermott. When McDermott identified himself to the couple, they handed him a sealed envelope and told him to listen to the tape inside, according to papers filed last month by McDermott's attorneys.
According to McDermott's filing, it was his first and only contact with the Martins. After taking the envelope, he took it back to his office and listened to the tape, recognizing the voices of Gingrich and other Republicans.
According to the filing, "McDermott was surprised to hear Speaker Gingrich discussing with the others how they might spin the settlement of ethics charges and the accompanying sanctions against the Speaker in a favorable light. Congressman McDermott believed that the conversation recorded on the tape, in which the third highest-elected official in the Federal Government and others were discussing the settlement agreement, the accompanying sanctions, and their plans to engage in the type of 'spin campaign' that the settlement was supposed to forbid, was of significant public interest."
After listening to the tape, McDermott called two reporters, Adam Clymer of The New York Times and Jeanne Cummings of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "and invited them separately to his office. He gave each reporter the opportunity to listen to the tape, but it did not leave his office. Neither Congressman McDermott nor his staff made any copies of the tape," according to the court filing.

I'd picked up bits and pieces of the backstory but frankly, I think so highly of McD that I'd trust him in any event and hadn't searched out the details.

it's the "LOOK HOW UNETHICAL THE DEMS ARE!" ploy