An eight-member congressional panel found Rangel, 80, guilty of 11 counts, including failing to report rental income, improper use of a rent-stabilized apartment and soliciting charitable donations from people with business before Congress.
The House of Representatives ethics committee will now consider punishment, which will likely be a public denunciation by the full House, possibly this week.
Rangel, of New York, resigned in March as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee after being admonished for corporate-sponsored trips in violation of House gift rules.
Before giving up the gavel, he helped craft President Barack Obama's overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.
Despite his ethical problems, Rangel's constituents want to keep their popular congressman, a former U.S. prosecutor and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus first elected to the House in 1970.
He won a 21st two-year term with 80 percent of the vote in the November 2 election -- even as his fellow Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans.
Stranger things have happened. It depends on what the ethics committee decides should be his punishment. I think after 40 years however it's time for him to go...but I doubt he's going much of anywhere.
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