Ethics Committee Deadlocked Over Gingrich Issues

After months of secretive deliberations, the House Ethics Committee is deadlocked over how to handle ethics complaints against House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Sources familiar with the deliberations said Thursday that the panel is paralyzed by an extraordinary degree of partisanship. Although it has five Republicans and five Democrats, the committee traditionally has been expected to consider ethics complaints in a nonpartisan manner.

While Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.)--who chairs the panel--insists that the committee is making progress in its closed-door deliberations, the deadlock is so deep that Democrats are becoming convinced that no resolution of the charges will be possible. “It’s hopeless,” one knowledgeable source said.

“I can’t remember a time when the committee has ever been so deadlocked over a case as serious as this one,” said Stanley M. Brand, who served as House counsel in the 1970s and ‘80s and represented both Democrats and Republicans in ethics cases. “There have been 8-2 votes and even 6-4 votes in the past but never such a standoff.”

The deadlock, which became clear as Gingrich left for New York to sign a contract for a lucrative book deal that is the focus of one of the complaints, has led Democrats to argue that they should press the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether Gingrich has used his public office improperly to promote his private and political agendas.

Until now, Gingrich’s critics, who include both Democrats and congressional watchdog groups such as Common Cause, have been pressing the Ethics Committee to adhere to a precedent followed in other politically sensitive investigations by appointing an outside counsel to conduct an inquiry.

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But after several marathon meetings over the last few weeks, the committee remained divided along party lines, with its five Democrats pressing for an outside counsel and its five Republicans insisting that the charges be dropped altogether.

As a result, Democratic leaders said that they may give up on the committee process and go straight to the Justice Department under the independent counsel law.

Ironically, when that law was amended last year, it was extended to cover members of Congress at the insistence of Republicans--Gingrich among them. It now authorizes the Justice Department to conduct a preliminary inquiry and--if warranted--a formal investigation of possible violations of federal law by a member of Congress.

The five separate but related ethics complaints against Gingrich include allegations that he may have violated House rules and federal laws by using tax-deductible donations to fund a college course he taught, using congressional resources to promote the sale of his lecture tapes, accepting free cable television time to broadcast the course and allowing a GOP political consultant to use his offices.

The biggest public controversy, however, has centered on allegations that he used his prestige as Speaker to negotiate a $4.5-million book contract with HarperCollins, a New York publishing firm owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who has a number of financial interests in legislation now before Congress.

When that controversy erupted, Gingrich agreed to forgo the multimillion-dollar advance and asked the Ethics Committee to pass judgment on the book contract, which gives him a 15% royalty on all hardcover sales and a 7.5% royalty on paperback editions.

While the committee still has not issued an opinion on the book, Gingrich’s office said Thursday that the Speaker was proceeding to sign the contract and would go on a 35-city promotional tour, sponsored by HarperCollins, in August.

“He routinely submitted the [contract] to the Ethics Committee as a courtesy but he is not waiting for [a decision]. . . . It’s a standard book contract and the tour will take in approximately the same number of cities as [Vice President] Al Gore’s book tour did” several years ago, Gingrich spokesman Tony Blankley said.

Democrats charged that the tour raises new ethical questions, especially in view of persistent speculation that Gingrich may enter next year’s presidential race. Although he has denied having presidential ambitions, Gingrich has refused to rule himself out of the race and has scheduled a four-day trip next month to New Hampshire, site of the first presidential primary.

“At a time when the American taxpayers will be paying his salary, Mr. Gingrich is going to be on the road promoting a book that will make him a multimillionaire,” House Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) charged at a news conference.

“I find it interesting,” he added, that this tour was announced on exactly the same day” that a House committee was writing telecommunications legislation that “stands to make Mr. Murdoch billions of dollars. . . . When is Mr. Gingrich going to learn that the office of Speaker is not for sale?”

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Expressing concern that Gingrich might use the tour for political purposes, Democrats contended that Murdoch appeared to be underwriting the start of a Gingrich presidential campaign and they asked the Ethics Committee to review the tour for potential conflicts of interest.

Noting that other members of Congress had gone on tours to promote their books in the past, Blankley dismissed the new allegations as partisan “nonsense.”

However, the tour controversy also comes amid reports of a transgression of a regulation barring members from using official resources for personal gain.

The New York Daily News reported Thursday that an unnamed source at HarperCollins said Gingrich’s congressional staff had assisted in writing the book, entitled “To Renew America,” and in preparing the tour. “We couldn’t do it without consulting with his staff,” the source was quoted as saying.

Times staff writer Alan C. Miller contributed to this story.