New hire may mean new legs for Waters’s case

The ethics case against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) may see some action in the near future, following the hiring of a new staff director for the House Ethics Committee.

On Monday committee Chairman Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) and ranking Democrat Rep. Linda Sanchez (Calif.) announced that the panel had unanimously selected Daniel Schwager to fill the four-month vacancy. The committee heads said they were working to fill other vacancies on the panel as well.

The case against Waters stalled last year. Shortly afterward, two of the committee’s lawyers — Morgan Kim, a former deputy chief counsel and director of investigations and enforcement, and committee counsel Stacy Sovereign — were placed on administrative leave. Charges surfaced that they improperly handled the probe into Waters’s case.

“After a challenging end to the 111th Congress, the committee is anxious to move forward with the business of the 112th Congress and is confident that Dan will serve the committee with integrity and without bias,” Bonner said in a statement.

Schwager served most recently as a counsel with the Senate Ethic Committee from 2009 to 2010. He has also worked for the Department of Justice and the New York County District Attorney’s office.

The allegations against Waters center on questions of whether she helped secure federal funding for a bank in which her husband owned stock.

Waters has maintained her innocence and pointed to the committee's suspension of her case last year as evidence that the case had no merit.

Neither Bonner nor Sanchez mentioned the Waters’ case by name in their statement of Schwager’s hiring.

The panel reported initiating six new ethics probes in the first quarter of this year, according to its report issued last week – only one of which has been terminated.