A nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington filed a complaint Monday with the Office of Congressional Ethics accusing Rep. Mark Sanford of using his office for personal financial gain.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the South Carolina Republican violated House ethics rules by accepting more than $100,000 in stock from mortgage broker Lending Tree’s parent company, Tree.com.
The company put Sanford on its board of directors in 2012, before he was elected to Congress. He was partially paid with “restricted stock units” — stock awards that had no value until vested in June 2013 and June 2014, CREW says. When he won a special election to the House in May 2013, he resigned from the board, making his unvested shares worthless. But in June of that year, the board voted to retroactively vest Sanford’s shares at a value of at least $108,539, the group says.
Gifts to House members are highly restricted. Members may receive employment benefits or severance packages from a former employer, but only if those benefits were not offered or enhanced because of the lawmaker’s official position and the package is no more generous than what was given to similar employees.
Sanford’s 2013 election was a political comeback for the Republican, who suffered an embarrassing trespassing complaint filed against him by his former wife, who divorced him after a high-profile and contentious extramarital affair in 2009 while he was governor of South Carolina.
“The second act of Mark Sanford’s political life seems to be just as corrupt as the first,” said Anne Weismann, CREW’s Interim Executive Director. “Given his apparent inability to follow basic ethics rules, the OCE must conduct a full investigation into any violations Rep. Sanford may have committed by taking a special deal that no one else at Lending Tree got.”
