MINNEAPOLIS – A reporter for the Minnesota Reformer, Daniel Newhauser, likened the legal and ethics issues facing Minnesota Congressman Jim Hagedorn to a case involving Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodger, R-Wash., on misusing her office budget. At the end of the McMorris Rodgers investigation, in 2012, the House Ethics Committee asked her to reimburse the treasury for $7,575. The committee also asked that safeguards be put in place to prevent such a situation from occurring again. The House Ethics Committee relied on a Department of Justice ruling that bars Congressional employees from contracting with members of Congress on payments like the ones from Hagedorn’s office to a member of his staff. In short, the Hagedorn mailer contracts could be illegal, Newhauser concluded.
Earlier: Mankato editorial scolds Hagedorn
Elliot Berke, the lawyer to whom Hagedorn turned for an internal investigation of mailer contracts, a d also to deal with the House ethics Committee, also represented McMorris Rodgers in her ethics problems in 2012. She survived the ethics investigation and was re-elected.