Newt and the House Ethics Committee

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NANCY’S DILEMMA

On March 21, Nancy Johnson, chair of the House Ethics Committee, told reporters that the allegations against the Speaker were not “frivolous.”

Gingrich ally Paul Weyrich struck back quickly, saying that if Johnson “makes the wrong decision” on an investigator, “she will weaken the speaker of her own party and …affect her chances of continuing to be a committee chairman.”

Meanwhile, Gingrich slammed a bill through the House that was Johnson’s biggest priority this year. The bill benefits the powerful insurance companies in her home state of Connecticut, from whom she collected $95,000 in 1991-1992.

Was Gingrich trying to influence the Ethics Committee chair? Continued questions about Johnson’s impartiality are legitimate and inevitable.


All four Republicans on the Ethics Committee have at least one seeming conflict with either Gingrich or GOPAC.

  • Porter Goss’ campaign contributed $5,000 last year to Gingrich’s GOPAC. Goss, of Florida, said he was surprised to have been reappointed to the panel.
  • Steven Schiff, of New Mexico, may be called as a witness in the very case he is expected to judge. In 1993, a lobbyist for the restaurant industry, Richard Berman, gave $25,000 to Gingrich’s college course while seeking Newt’s help in testifying against a bill authored by Schiff. (See “The Berman Letter”) Democrats claim the incident constitutes an illegal gratuity and Schiff could be asked to testify.
  • Jim Bunning, of Kentucky, received support from GOPAC in 1979 when he ran for the Kentucky legislature. He has also attended GOPAC meetings. He denies a conflict, noting that Gingrich didn’t run GOPAC at that time. But Bunning also shares with GOPAC a billionaire contributor, Carl Lindner of Cincinnati (a former cohort of Charles Keating).
  • Finally, Dave Hobson, of Ohio, privately solicited a letter from a former Ethics Committee staffer that is being used in Gingrich’s defense.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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