Wrangling Charlie Rangel, Part 4

The Harlem Dem is in serious ethics trouble according to TPM's Brian Beutler, so much so that observers are openly questioning if Rangel will take a deal or not to prevent his expulsion from the House.

In the coming days, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has a choice to make. He can listen to his Democratic colleagues and cut a deal, or he can face a full trial before a House panel over several allegations of misconduct.

It's extremely rare for congressional ethics proceedings to reach this stage. Members more commonly acknowledge some wrongdoing, or resign, well before they're forced to defend themselves before an official body. But the gravity of the Rangel allegations, combined with his intransigence to this point, leave him poised, potentially, to be the first House member to be tried, and even expelled, by his own colleagues since James Traficant, in 2002.

"We're kind of astonished it's gone this far," says Peter Flaherty, President of the National Legal and Policy Center, whose work led to one investigation of Rangel and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. "We always believed the allegations against Rangel were serious, but we never thought the Ethics Committee would do anything."

House Ethics officials remain mum about exactly what violations they'll charge Rangel with, but they're likely to include, among others: wrongfully accepting four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem; failure to report, or pay taxes on, income earned from renting a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic; and trading favors with an oil executive who may have sought Rangel's support for preserving a tax loophole in exchange for a donation to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York.

The latter allegation -- the one about which there's the least public knowledge -- is potentially the most damning.

"That's the thing that comes closes to bribery, so to my mind that's the most serious thing," says Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

With midterm elections coming and the Dems already in trouble there,  Rangel will find little to no help among his colleagues in the House:  they're all up for re-election.  The fact that Rangel hasn't said much of anything on this and walked away with a slap on the wrist and an apology is the big giveaway that he's going to be facing some significant charges here before the end of the month.

While I appreciate the Dems taking this seriously enough to not  treat Rangel with kid gloves here, this nasty mess he's apparently in never should have gotten this far either.  If anything, Nancy Pelosi now has to step in as Speaker and make Rangel take a deal...a deal that will almost certainly have to end his career in the House.