Lest some poor soul actually believe the Senate cares about ethics, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics has now disabused them of that notion.
Even when a senator openly admits and even brags about breaking Senate rules, the Ethics Committee will issue him no penalty. Indeed, so dismissive of ethics concerns is the committee that it won’t even bother a single sentence explaining its lack of action.
Those are the obvious conclusions to be drawn from the committee’s curt letter dismissing a complaint filed by the watchdog group Judicial Watch against Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., for releasing confidential records from then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s work in the George W. Bush White House. The document release led to Booker’s much-pilloried, self-proclaimed “I am Spartacus moment,” in which the famous fabulist tried to grab a martyr’s mantle. Booker even went so far as to say he was willing to be expelled from the Senate for his supposed act of bravery.
This wasn’t a momentary act of bravado, either. For days afterward, he boasted about his rule-breaking and dared the Senate to do something about it. For example, on Facebook four full days later, he released a lengthy statement to this effect: “I willfully violate these sham rules. I fully accept any consequences that might arise from my actions including expulsion. Sen. Cornyn of Texas threatened me with expulsion during the hearings. Now he is threatening ethics charges. As I said then, I say it now: Bring it.”
Well, the Ethics Committee didn’t bring anything. It didn’t even offer a cursory rebuttal of Judicial Watch’s assertion that Booker had “violated provisions 5 and/or 6 of Rule 29 of the Standing Rules of the Senate.” Judicial Watch’s complaint was targeted and specific, but it received not even the courtesy of an acknowledgment that its concerns were reasonable.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the committee’s inaction “an absolute disgrace.” He is correct. For the Senate’s own rules to be treated with such brazen contempt, and then for the Senate to make no effort either to defend those rules or to express the mildest concern about violations thereof, is a sign of craven indifference to the importance of both ethics and its own reputation. No wonder so much of the public holds senators in such low esteem.
