Todd Winer, the former communications director for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) decided to break his “silence in the Cathy McMorris Rodgers scandal” on Monday, alleging that the congresswoman retaliated against him for filing an ethics complaint against her.
In a four-page email to reporters, Todd Winer accused McMorris Rodgers of seeking “retribution” for filing an ethics complaint against her office.
Winer served as communications director for McMorris Rodgers before he was let go in January 2013. He filed an ethics complaint several months later, in July 2013, against the Washington congresswoman alleging that she used taxpayer-funded staff and taxpayer-funded resources to help mount her bid for Republican conference committee chairwoman in November 2012.
The Office of Congressional Ethics referred the allegation to the House Ethics Committee this February. As of March, the committee said it was still investigating the matter. That was the last development until Winer’s email on Monday.
Winer also said that he was interviewed by the Ethics Committee last week, but that the interview was targeting a different question than the one that he raised in his complaint.
In the email, Winer said that the Ethics Committee is looking into McMorris Rodgers’ attempt to “intimidate and punish” him. Winer accused McMorris Rodgers’ staff of spreading lies about him that were so serious they rose to “the level of defamation.” He said that McMorris Rodgers’ office released his name to reporters as a way of getting revenge for filing the ethics complaint.
“Under the law, you can’t spread to the media things you know to be false about someone with the goal of damaging their reputation,” Winer said according to the Seattle Times.
Read the full email, via Roll Call’s Matt Fuller, here.
She looks like someone who would cut you just so she could watch you bleed.
I always knew she was a bad egg.
This guy really didn’t want to cram hours of extra-curricular “volunteer” work into the already hectic job of managing communications for an ambitious Rep. Can’t say I blame him. That work can be grueling. But it’s funny to see these details that look like such a bright line arrow directed at McMorris-Rodgers with an investigation completely stalled out.
I wonder if Winer hurt himself by trying to minimize damage to the Party. The Party is like the Mafia, Todd - it will always be bigger than you, and it will always value its reputation over your work.
My guess? He was disgruntled and either fired or quit soon after the leadership race. McMorris-Rodgers stymied his career options after that while she insulated herself with high profile pols who have been around the Capitol for a long time. He popped back up a few times; she swatted him back down a few times.
An ethics complaint is a long shot with a smoking gun, but now we’ve got (1) a pedantic scandal, against (2) a prominent but largely unknown scalp outside the Beltway, whose (3) staff may have had plenty of time to close ranks on the “Todd was a doofus” defense. Todd Winer helped McMorris-Rodgers for a time, but that relationship was transactional. Now that he’s burned her, she’ll burn him back, a hundred times hotter. And his last hope is that this West Texan from Midland (House Ethics Committee Chair) decides to go knives out for Republican leadership.
Good luck.
doG, I love internal GOP fights!
“Under the law, you can’t spread to the media things you know to be false about someone with the goal of damaging their reputation…” Wanna bet? fox does it 24/7.