The ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.V.) is under investigation. That much is clear. And politically, there can be no question that it’s a black eye for Democrats.
But it’s not clear from press accounts what Mollohan is under investigation for. Maybe that’s because a Congressman misstating financial assets doesn’t make for scintillating news copy?
Here’s why Mollohan may be in trouble.
Ken Boehm of the National Legal and Policy Center filed an 81 page complaint (along with more than 400 pages of exhibits) with the U.S. Attorney’s Office on February 28th. It’s principal allegation was that Mollohan had consistently and repeatedly undervalued or failed to report assets on his financial disclosure reports. If true, Boehm says Mollohan would be in violation of two laws:
1) The False Statements Accountability Act. This would be a criminal violation with a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
2) The Ethics in Government Act. This would be a civil violation that would most likely bring a fine at most.
So that’s what Mollohan is being accused of: filing false financial disclosure reports. Simple.
And this seems to be precisely what investigators are interested in, according to “people contacted in the inquiry.”
There is the further question as to why Mollohan might have been doing this. Because he was up to no good? Maybe. But there seems to be no answer to that as yet.
There is much more to the story, having to do with the network of nonprofits in West Virginia that Mollohan has funded almost exclusively with earmarks. The vast majority of the Journal‘s and NY Times‘ pieces on Mollohan are about these nonprofits, but their relation to the NLPC’s complaint is, as even Boehm admits, speculative.
Even the fact that Mollohan has made at least a couple million in recent years, according to what he has reported on his disclosure forms, is beside the point. The question is about what he hasn’t reported, not what he has.
For his part, Mollohan has said that he’s disclosed everything properly, but won’t reply to specific allegations until he’s read the complaint, according to West Virginia’s Dominion Post. Boehm says that the NLPC plans to release portions of the complaint sometime in the near future. Until then, as long as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) continues to stand by Mollohan, he’ll continue to stick it out.
