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The ethics committee approved a trip Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) took to an Antigua beach resort late last year — an excursion that critics say was paid for by lobbyists.
Last November, Rangel, his son Steven and a top aide, George Dalley, attended a business conference at the Sandals Grande Antigua Resort & Spa for a foundation affiliated with a weekly New York-based Caribbean newspaper.
The organization, the Carib News Foundation, has organized and sponsored the annual conference to promote business, trade and ties between the U.S. and the Caribbean at luxurious resorts in different areas of the islands of the South Atlantic for more than a decade.
Rangel’s attorney, Lanny Davis, provided The Hill with a copy of the ethics committee letter, dated Oct. 16, 2007.
“Pursuant to House Rule XXV, clause 5(d)(2), the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct hereby approves the proposed trip for you and your child to Antigua, West Indies, scheduled for November 8 to 11, 2007,” the ethics committee wrote in its letter to Rangel.
The journey has come under scrutiny because Rangel failed to file a post-trip report, as House ethics rules require, within 15 days of returning from privately sponsored travel. On Tuesday, Rangel corrected the error by filing the post-trip report.
The ethics committee started requiring the post-trip reports as part of its effort to crack down on a rash of lobbyist-funded junkets that came to light during and after the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal and its notorious golf trip to Scotland. Abramoff paid for the trip by funneling money through a nonprofit, which members such as former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) then listed as the trip’s sponsor on their disclosure forms.
Lobbyist-funded travel has long been prohibited, but in early 2007 Democrats instituted new ethics rules barring lobbyists or entities that employ them from funding junkets in any way.
When asked why Rangel didn’t file the post-trip report last year as required, Davis — a regular contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog — referred to Rangel’s previous comments about a series of mistakes and omissions the New York Democrat made to the IRS and the ethics committee about his personal finances. Rangel has said they were simply oversights and mistakes that did not involve any ill intent.
In addition, corporations such as Macy’s, AT&T and Pfizer are listed on a program as sponsors of different panel discussions at the Antigua conference, raising questions about whether lobbyists for the corporations paid for the conference and attended it. The New York Post ran a story in mid-September charging that lobbyists paid for the trip by bundling their “sponsorship cash” through the Caribbean newspaper, the NY Carib News.
Karl Rodney, a Jamaican-born businessman and founder of the Carib News, flatly denied that federal lobbyists paid for the Antigua trip or attended.
“That is patently false,” he said.
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