What a difference five days makes. During her press conference last Friday, Nancy Pelosi defended Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) from ethics charges but in doing so she completely mischaracterized the findings of the House Ethics Committee at least once when she said that the committee concluded that her Ways and Means chairman had not broken any House rules. That’s simply not true.
In fairness, she hedged later in the press conference by saying that Rangel hadn’t “willfully” broken any rules (which isn’t quite what the committee said, but she was headed in the right direction) and then saying, accurately, that Rangel hadn’t “knowingly” violated House rules. Considering she accepted his request today for a leave of absence as chairman, it’s an interesting bit of video to watch:
