Senate Panel Urges Stiff Penalties for Durenberger

In one of the harshest punishments it has ever recommended, the Senate Ethics Committee unanimously urged the full Senate Wednesday to denounce Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.) for “reprehensible” financial dealings and to require him to make restitution of more than $100,000.

The bipartisan panel also suggested that Durenberger’s Republican colleagues consider further disciplinary action, such as taking away choice committee assignments or leadership positions. The senator has been a prominent voice on health and intelligence issues in his 12 years in the Senate.

In what it called a routine move, the Ethics Committee also referred two matters to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission for possible prosecution. Committee leaders added, however, that they doubt there are grounds for criminal or civil charges.

The Minnesota senator is accused of circumventing Senate rules on honorariums, padding his expense account, accepting prohibited gifts from lobbyists and converting a campaign contribution to personal use.

Durenberger, 55, saying in an even voice that he is sorry for “serious mistakes,” agreed at a news conference to make restitution “as a tangible sign of my regret and of my continuing commitment to the people of Minnesota.”

But he declined to say whether he would fight to have the other part of the penalty reduced from “denunciation” to “reprimand” when the matter comes to the Senate floor, probably later this month. The committee could have recommended expulsion from the Senate. In choosing denunciation, as suggested by its special counsel, Robert Bennett, the panel voted to reject the slightly stronger term, “censure.”

In the only other serious cases in the Ethics Committee’s 26-year history, Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-Conn.) was censured by the full Senate for expense violations; Sen. Herman E. Talmadge (D-Ga.) was denounced for campaign fund abuses, and Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr. (D-N.J.) resigned in the face of certain expulsion for bribery in the Abscam scandal.

At a news conference, Ethics Committee Chairman Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) announced that the panel found that Durenberger’s conduct “has been reprehensible and has brought the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”

The panel recommended that he “be denounced” in a resolution that would be recited as he stands before his colleagues in the Senate chamber. For the first time in history, the committee also recommended that a colleague be made to pay a financial penalty for misconduct.

Durenberger would have to reimburse the Senate $29,050 plus interest for improperly claiming as a business expense rent on a Minneapolis condominium that he partly owned.

The senator also would have to donate to charities most of the $95,000 he received in excess of Senate limits on speech honorariums. He could deduct from the figure an unknown amount of state and federal taxes already paid on the income.

Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), the committee’s vice chairman, said that “none of the members of the committee are happy today. But the committee has done its duty to the institution and believes it has accorded Sen. Durenberger due process of law and fairness.”

At rare public hearings in June, special counsel Bennett laid out a detailed case against the senator.

He charged that Durenberger evaded Senate limits on honorariums by disguising $95,000 worth of speaking fees as payments for promoting two books dealing with national security and health care issues in 1985 and 1986.

Under agreement with Piranha Press of Minnesota, Durenberger had honorarium payments sent to the publisher, and the publisher in turn paid him fees for promotional services, Bennett said. When he neared the honorarium limit of $22,500 in 1985 and $30,040 in 1986, honorarium checks were routinely directed to Piranha Press, he said.

James Hamilton, Durenberger’s attorney, argued that the arrangement, which he said had been cleared with the Federal Election Commission, broke no rules.

On another deal, Bennett contended that Durenberger improperly sought and received Senate reimbursement of $40,055 for living expenses outside of Washington from 1983 to 1989 by attempting to obscure ownership of a condominium that he owned in Minneapolis.

Bennett also said that Durenberger backdated a partnership agreement that included the condominium to justify part of the reimbursement.

Hamilton said that the transfer of ownership was legitimate and denied any attempt to hide the transactions.

Durenberger has said that his complex dealings stemmed largely from family and financial problems. He separated from his wife in 1985 and spoke publicly of a midlife crisis.