A House Republican plans to move forward in the coming days with a resolution to expel Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick from Congress over fraud allegations.
Rep. Greg Steube, Florida Republican, said he plans to call up a resolution to expel Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida when the House returns next week, after a House Ethics Committee report said it found “substantial reason to believe” she violated the law.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted in November for defrauding the government of $5 million in disaster assistance and using it to get elected to Congress.
Prosecutors said Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, along with her brother and others, bid and won contracts to staff COVID vaccine registration drives for their company Trinity Health Care Services. But when it was overpaid by over $5 million, they refused to give the money back, which Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick then used for her campaign.
Expulsion requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass, meaning it would need a good number of Democrats to vote with Republicans to oust Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said the effort will fail.
“The congresswoman is of course entitled to the presumption of innocence,” Mr. Jeffries told reporters Friday. “She’s going through the process right now. And any effort to expel her lacks any basis at this moment in law, fact, or the Constitution. And if in fact there’s a resolution that is brought to the floor to try to expel the congresswoman, it’s going to fail.”
Mr. Jeffries said the threat to expel her is “an exercise that is just designed to get attention and is inconsistent with what due process requires at this moment.”
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick has slammed the charges as “baseless” and a “sham.”
She said the Ethics Committee’s action “was taken without giving me a fair opportunity to rebut or defend myself due to the constraints of an ongoing legal process.”
“I reject these allegations and remain confident the full facts will make clear I did nothing wrong,” she said in a statement. “Until then, my focus remains where it belongs: delivering for my constituents and continuing the work they sent me to Washington to do,” she said.
The report released by the House Ethics Committee’s investigative subcommittee said the investigation “has revealed substantial evidence of conduct consistent with the allegations in the indictment, as well as more extensive misconduct … related to violations of federal laws and regulations, as well as ethical standards.”
The subcommittee said it met 12 times over the 118th and 119th Congresses to conduct its investigation. It sent 30 requests for information, issued 59 subpoenas, reviewed over 33,000 documents and conducted interviews with 28 witnesses.
Mr. Steube initially said in November that he wanted to censure Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick.
