Durenberger Apologizes, Ends Ethics Hearing

Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.) apologized to his colleagues Wednesday for alleged financial misconduct and abruptly brought to a close an unusual public hearing of the Senate Ethics Committee by waiving his right to call or cross-examine witnesses.

Durenberger said he regretted what he characterized as honest mistakes in his financial affairs and asked committee members for sympathetic treatment as they consider possible sanctions for alleged violations of Senate ethics rules.

“My life and reputation are at stake,” said the embattled lawmaker, speaking carefully in a soft voice from a statement that took an hour to read.

“I hope that you will consider the whole person of Dave Durenberger, what I did wrong and what I’ve done right for this institution,” he said. “I hope you will compare that with your own experience of life in this body.”

Durenberger insisted that “in my heart” there was no intent to break Senate ethics rules by allegedly evading limits on speech honorariums and claiming rent reimbursements for a condominium he partly owned.

Although saying that he accepted “full responsibility” for any violations, he urged the committee not to follow the recommendation of special counsel Robert S. Bennett to publicly denounce him--the most severe sanction available short of outright expulsion.

The rare public hearing before the Ethics Committee, the first such session in nine years, had been expected to last as long as two weeks. But Durenberger’s decision to waive his right to call witnesses ended the hearing after only two days.

Durenberger’s attorney, James Hamilton, said his client had opted to put the complex inquiry before the committee for judgment based on the voluminous written record compiled over more than a year of investigation.

Committee Chairman Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), a former judge, noted that, by waiving further public proceedings, Durenberger would avoid the ordeal of cross-examination by Bennett and committee members. The hearing was adjourned and the 32 committee witnesses and 25 defense witnesses who had been subpoenaed to testify were told that they could go home.

Bennett is required to submit a final report to the committee. He said he would try to complete it within two weeks. Hamilton is entitled to submit a final brief in defense of Durenberger. The panel then will prepare its final report, which will recommend to the full Senate whether Durenberger should be exonerated, reprimanded, denounced, censured or expelled.

In his statement Wednesday, Durenberger repeated his contention that he had acted “in good faith” in his financial affairs and pleaded for compassion and understanding from the quasi-judicial committee.

“I believe, because I know you, that each of you will combine both good judgment and compassion in your decision,” Durenberger told the six-member panel, of which he was once a member.

“To the extent my actions, inactions or failure to perceive the consequences of my actions have in any way reflected poorly on the Senate as an institution, or been uncomfortable or distressful to you as persons, I am sincerely sorry.”

Durenberger drew heavily on personal experience in his appeal. He described his upbringing in a Benedictine community in Minnesota, where he was the child of an academic family, and spoke of his struggle to raise four sons after his first wife’s early death from cancer.

He said he is determined to make amends for the ethics scandal by continuing to serve as an effective senator until his six-year term ends in 1994. Later, speaking to reporters, he firmly rejected any suggestion that he resign.

Durenberger repeatedly stressed to the committee that any improper actions were undertaken “on the advice of outside, independent attorneys.” He said: “I have never sold my vote or improperly used my influence with a federal agency for my personal gain.”

He acknowledged having made mistakes in his dealings with a book company that paid him $100,000 over two years from fees collected from speaking engagements, an arrangement characterized by Bennett as a “clearly . . . unethical” evasion of rules limiting honorarium income.

Durenberger said he never attempted to hide the complex arrangements by which he sought to maximize income at a time of personal financial difficulty.

“All these matters were done in the open and disclosed,” he said. “There has been no obfuscation or cover-up. Would anyone in their right mind cook up a scheme to evade the Senate rules with an organization called Piranha Press?”

Durenberger suggested that the Senate’s ethics standards have been changing rapidly--so much so that it has become virtually impossible for a “citizen-politician” who does not have substantial private income to make ends meet under present rules.

“I needn’t remind the six of you in particular that the U.S. Senate is no longer the place to which America brings its poor, its tired, its hungry masses to represent people like them and the rest of our country,” he said. “While the pride of our democracy is still the citizen nature of our Legislature, we’ve made it awfully difficult for ordinary folks to be represented here by people just like them.”

The accusations against Durenberger were the first to be presented in public hearings before the Ethics Committee since 1981, when Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr. (D-N.J.) was investigated for his role in the Abscam bribery scandal. Williams resigned after the committee recommended his expulsion from the Senate.