The US House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to expel Representative James Traficant of Ohio, a loud, brash, and often crude legislator convicted earlier in federal court on bribery, tax evasion and fraud charges.
Traficant, expelled on a 420-1 vote, is just the second House member expelled since the end of the US Civil War in 1865.
Last week the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct found Traficant guilty on nine of 10 charges of ethics violations in an investigation, and recommended his expulsion.
”Vote your conscience, nothing personal,” Traficant told his colleagues at the conclusion of a lengthy, rambling, emotional defence in which he was asked twice to refrain from using coarse language.
Legislators speaking in favour of expelling Traficant all mentioned how difficult the decision was.
”This was a very painful decision for every one of us,” said ethics committee chairman Joel Hefley. ”This is not a pleasant time or a pleasant task.”
In April, a jury in his home state convicted Traficant of 10 counts of bribery, tax evasion and racketeering.
Traficant, who has appealed his conviction, is to be sentenced by the court July 30. Prosecutors have recommended a seven-year jail sentence.
Traficant, who described his supporters as ”a small army of patriots,” went into meticulous detail mentioning how witnesses against him were compromised, the judge in his case had a conflict of interest, and witnesses were coerced to testify against him.
”I’ll go to jail before I resign and admit to something I didn’t do,” he thundered several times.
According to Traficant, the federal government — especially the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department — were out to get him because of legislation he sponsored years ago curtailing their power.
He even blamed his fellow Democratic legislators for making the IRS and the Treasury department ”so powerful that the American people hate them.”
Traficant’s offences were ”so serious and so purposeful that expulsion of the House” was warranted, said Doc Hastings, a Republican from Washington state.
Traficant ”traded his office, demanded and received tens of thousands of dollars” in kickbacks and bribes, said Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California.
”We did an independent review,” she said. ”We unanimously concluded that Mr. Traficant should be found guilty of violating house rules,” Lofgren said.
Only four legislators before Traficant had ever been expelled from the House: three were found guilty of treason for supporting the Confederacy during the 1861-1865 Civil War, and the fourth — Michael Myers, a Democrat from Pennsylvania — was caught accepting bribe money on a hidden camera during an FBI sting operation in 1980 known as Abscam.
Traficant (61) a former sheriff first elected to the House in 1984, argued repeatedly that there was no physical evidence against him.
The only vote for Traficant came from Gary Condit, the obscure California Democrat who became a household name after Chandra Levy — an intern he had a sexual tryst with — went missing. Levy’s lifeless body appeared nearly one year later, and though Condit was never a suspect, he was not re-nominated by the party to his seat.
Traficant’s defence was more subdued than his defence before the House Ethics Committee last week, when he was confrontational and profane. Nor did he follow through on threats of outrageous behaviour if the House approved his expulsion.
An earlier vote on a motion to postpone the expulsion proceeding until September 4, when Congress returns from recess, was defeated 146-285. – Sapa-AFP