House Ethics Panel Hears Charges Against Sheila Cherfilus-mccormick

The bipartisan members of a House Ethics panel heard the arguments for and against charging Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick with violating House rules. Now they must decide whether she’s guilty — an outcome that could lead to her removal from office.

Following proceedings Thursday afternoon that constituted the first House Ethics Committee “trial” in over a decade, an adjudicatory subcommittee adjourned after more than six hours late Thursday evening to deliberate in a closed-door session over the Florida Democrat’s fate. After those deliberations, members will announce in a joint statement whether they believe Cherfilus-McCormick is guilty of, among other things, illegally funneling money to her campaign — charges also being levied against her at the federal level in her home state.

The full committee chair, Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), said he could not predict when such a verdict will be reached.

If the subcommittee members find her guilty, they will likely meet again in the coming weeks to recommend a punishment to then be voted on by the full House, which could be as mild as a reprimand or censure or severe as expulsion. The last House member to be expelled was former New York Republican Rep. George Santos in 2023; he was ultimately sentenced to prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft only to later be pardoned by President Donald Trump.

“The allegations before us are extremely serious," said Rep. Mark DeSaulnier of California, the top Democrat on the Ethics panel, in his opening statement. "They not only concern an individual member's conduct, they also implicate the public's confidence in the House's integrity as an institution.”

Cherfilus-McCormick, who has maintained her innocence, sought to delay Thursday’s hearing to give her new legal team time to prepare; her Ethics trial was postponed once already, earlier this month, due to her loss of representation.

Her new attorney, William Barzee, said he needed until at least June to review the relevant materials and prepare. He also argued the congressional hearing would taint a federal criminal trial, where potential jurors could be influenced by the House Ethics proceedings.

But the panel, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, was unconvinced and allowed the public hearing to proceed. Guest said that the yearslong investigation into the three-term Democrat had been a “very slow, very deliberate process.” He also invoked the Santos case, in which the House voted to expel the former lawmaker while he was under a federal indictment.

The last time that the House Ethics Committee held a public trial for allegations of impropriety against a fellow lawmaker was for late-Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) in 2010. Rangel had been accused of multiple charges, including inappropriately soliciting funds. Similar to Cherfilus-McCormick, he at the time argued the panel deprived him due process by allowing the hearing to begin without time for him to find a lawyer.

Guest said in an interview earlier this week that the panel had studied the Rangel hearing in preparation for the case before them.

During the Thursday trial, staff for the Ethics panel argued that Cherfilus-McCormick portrayed herself as “independently wealthy” and yet she illicitly funnelled millions of dollars to her campaign directly or through intermediaries from the health care company Trinity, which is Cherfilus-McCormick’s family business. When she ran for the seat during a special election, she moved funds into and out of her campaign around filings deadlines, “misleading voters about the strength of her campaign,” the staff said.

Committee staff also contended Thursday that Cherfilus-McCormick has used her position to serve her allies, including in one instance where she submitted a funding request for an entity connected to a person whose company provided services to the lawmaker’s campaign and official office.

Barzee, Cherfilus-McCormick’s lawyer, largely did not provide material evidence to dispute the allegations, saying he did not have time to question witnesses. He again maintained that his client was disputing the allegations raised by the committee and urged the panel to allow him to call people who can testify to the fact that Cherfilus-McCormick was entitled to the money transferred to her from Trinity.

“Is this committee really going to just decide that she intentionally violated finance campaign law?” he asked. “At the very least, now is the time to pause.”

Guest at one point appeared visibly frustrated with Barzee, saying that his panel had worked diligently on the case for two years while Cherfilus-McCormick was now on her fourth attorney.

“For you to now allege that all this information is new, that we've not tried to gather this information for the last two years, I find that offensive, and I'm personally offended, because I know the work that this committee [does] to protect all members,” he said.

By his own admission, Barzee appeared unprepared for the day’s historic proceedings, repeatedly conferring with Cherfilus-McCormick over questions around the facts of the case. There were also instances where members of Cherfilus-McCormick’s own party sought to come to their colleague’s aid, seemingly worried that Barzee was not acting in his client’s best interest.

Cherfilus-McCormick, who sat quietly during the hearing, looked at one point on the precipice of contesting some matters under discussion by the panel, before Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) interjected, “please don’t, please don’t.”

Then, when Cherfilus-McCormick’s discussion with her counsel was somewhat audible, Ivey requested that the lawyer “put [his] hand over the microphone.” Later, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) again recommended Barzee separate himself from the microphone during an exchange with his client.

These moments offered glimpses of the deeply uncomfortable situation in which members of the Ethics Committee find themselves as they are forced to police the conduct of a fellow lawmaker. Though it wasn’t immediately clear Thursday whether other House Democrats were attending Cherfilus-McCormick’s trial as allies or simply interested parties, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas joined committee members on the dais for the start of the hearing, despite the fact that she is not on the panel. And Rep. Shomari Figures (D-Ala.) watched from the back of the committee room at the start of the proceedings.

Also in Washington for the hearing, seated in the front row, was Cherfilus-McCormick’s primary challenger Elijah Manley, who has positioned himself as the antidote to the corruption saga that has consumed the incumbent.

“Once this process ends … or she's found guilty, I think people should call on her to resign — it's only fair,” Manley said in an interview. “That is the standard we held George Santos to a few years ago, and I think that’s the same standard we need to hold the Congresswoman to.”