Watchdog group calls for ethics investigation of Devin Nunes over 'free' legal services
Delaney Marsco @DelaneyMarsco
We asked Office of Congressional Ethics (@CongressEthics) to investigate @DevinNunes today. He filed a flurry of SLAPP suits last year, and something doesn't add up. Namely, the money. The money doesn't add up! How is he paying for all of this legal work?
House rules treat discounted or free legal services as gifts, which are subject to strict limits. Members can receive free or discounted services if they set up a legal expense fund, and the services are "donated" to the fund.
But a legal expense fund requires approval and, importantly, disclosures! If a Member has a fund, the paperwork would be on file with the House Legislative Resource Center. I was up on the Hill yesterday, and I checked. They don't have any legal expense fund paperwork for Nunes.
So, no legal expense fund. Fine. That means Nunes has to pay up! Full price for any legal services, like the rest of us. And there are a few ways he could pay. He could use a legal expense fund, but like I said, he doesn't have one.
He could use campaign funds for the services, if he wanted to. But payments from the campaign would have to be disclosed too, on FEC records. There doesn't seem to be any record of campaign expenditures for his lawyer's services.
So that leaves a final, and obvious option. He's just paying for the services outright, out of pocket. That seems reasonable, but... unlikely. His lawyer has been doing legal work for Nunes for over 9 months now. The work he performed for Nunes is extensive, and complicated (his lawyer was arguing a RICO violation in one complaint... #RICO twitter, wya?)
The legal services appear to have been time-consuming and, therefore, expensive. Nunes has a congressional salary. It seems unlikely that he would pay for such services himself, unless he's receiving a steep discount, which is prohibited.
He could argue that his lawyer is working on a contingency fee basis. Contingency fees may be permissible in some circumstances (after approval by the Ethics Committee). But...not all of his lawyer's work could be paid for by a contingency fee, given the nature of the legal work.
His lawyer sent a letter to @tedlieu threatening to bring an ethics complaint against him. An ethics complaint wouldn't result in monetary damages that could support payment under a contingency fee agreement
In sum, @DevinNunes has not disclosed the source of payments for the legal services he is receiving, and the possibility of a contingency fee agreement with his lawyer is not an absolute defense for a violation of the House rules.
All this matters because we need to detect and prevent conflicts of interest. What if a lobbyist were paying for his legal services? We need OCE to get to the bottom of this.
Link to tweet
https://campaignlegal.org/update/rep-nunes-multi-million-dollar-lawsuits-against-media-potentially-violate-house-ethics-rule
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