Ethics panel looks into Cheeks Kilpatrick trip

[leland_palmer]

TODD SPANGLER
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF

The House Ethics Committee is launching an investigation into a Caribbean trip taken last year by Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Detroit and others.

The panel – officially known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct – announced today that it was establishing an investigative subcommittee to look at the two-day trip to St. Maarten just days after the November election. [[According to her disclosures, Kilpatrick took her sister along on the trip.)

At issue is whether the trip was sponsored in full by NY Carib News, a nonprofit group that promotes relations between the U.S. and Caribbean nations. It said it was – and that’s why the Ethics Committee signed off on the trip, since Carib News doesn’t have a federal lobbyist. But Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center in Falls Church, Va., flew down to see for himself and found strong suggestions other sponsors were involved, such as corporate logos for Citigroup, Verizon and others plastered around.

Some of those companies do have federal lobbyists – Citi, for instance, spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress last year – and so members can’t attend paid junkets on their behalf under the rules.

The Detroit News goes deeper into the details.