Ethics committee clears Gardner

Posted at 3:21 PM on June 2, 2009 by Tom Scheck (3 Comments)

Here's the release:

HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE FINDS NO PROBABLE CAUSE FOR ETHICS VIOLATION AGAINST GARDNER

This afternoon through a unanimous and bipartisan motion, the House Ethics Committee found no probable cause of an ethics violation against Rep. Paul Gardner.

Instead, pursuant to Rule 9 of the House Committee on Ethics, Rules and Procedures, the majority of the committee recommended the issue be dealt with through "informal reconciliation," which is reserved for behaviors that are considered "inadvertent, technical, or of a de minimus nature." While not finding that an ethics violation occurred, the committee did recommend that Rep. Gardner make one additional apology to those who took offense on the House floor.

Gardner released the following statement.

"I am pleased the House Ethics committee realized I have taken responsibility for my actions in an appropriate manner and found that no ethics violation occurred. Moving forward, my hope is that this incident will help focus all members of the House of Representatives on together elevating our public debate to a higher level."

UPDATE: Session Weekly reports that Gardner has to make an apology from the House floor.

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Comments (3)

Complaint against Gardner = typical Republican fake ginned-up outrage.

The Gardner comments were nothing.

Posted by Ginny | June 2, 2009 5:39 PM

Obviously none of you listened to Paul Gardner's testimony before the committee. It's available.

Gardner clearly admitted that he broke the rules, violated the ethical code of conduct and acted contrary to the policies of the House of Representatives. His admissions are on the tape. He has been admonished by his peers for acting inappropriately.

This whole mess should have been resolved before the session ended. And it likely would have been if Gardner hadn't been so smug about it.

Posted by Drew Emmer | June 3, 2009 2:54 PM

I can't help it that the outcome isn't what you would prefer but to suggest that I didn't know what was going on is ridiculous. I wrote about the story (in which I said Gardner admitted to the tweets) last week, for pete's sake.

Posted by Tom Scheck | June 3, 2009 3:24 PM

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