Traficant Remains Defiant
Rep. James Traficant denied taking bribes during questioning from a skeptical peer panel considering whether to recommend his expulsion from the House.
Traficant, who has been complaining about a government vendetta since he beat the FBI in a bribery case in 1983 while defending himself, continued to insist Tuesday he did nothing wrong and shouldn't have been convicted of bribery and racketeering.
Traficant maintained that all of the witnesses in the April criminal trial were forced to testify under threat of reprisal by the FBI and the IRS.
"I have enough sense to realize what's going on," Traficant shouted, standing up behind the committee table where he is representing himself again. "They railroaded the hell out of me and they're doing (it) to millions of people around the country and the country's fed up with it."
During several back-and-forth exchanges with members, Traficant denied that his former staff member, Allen Sinclair, gave him $2,500 in cash each month, despite Sinclair's testimony in the criminal trial.
"Did you know what that $2,500 was for?" Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., asked.
"I didn't get $2,500 a month," Traficant insisted.
"Did anyone leave an envelope under your door?" she continued.
"No, they did not. If anyone wanted to give me $2,500, why wouldn't they just give it to me?" Traficant asked.
"Would you have this committee believe that it was coincidence that the $2,500 cash withdrawals stopped about the time the FBI contacted Mr. Sinclair?" posed Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Mo. "Is that what you would have this committee believe?"
"I don't deal in coincidences. I deal in facts," Traficant responded during the questioning, which he frequently interrupted by launching into his own interpretation of events, including the alleged government conspiracy with the witnesses.
"What you're saying is the only reason why they said what they said about you is that they're part of an effort by the FBI and the IRS to put you away?" said Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio.
"They got a get-out-of-jail free card," Traficant said.
"They got a get-out-of-jail-free card because the IRS and the Justice Department or the FBI were after you?" Tubbs-Jones asked.
"Absolutely," he said.
House Ethics Chairman Joel Hefley, R-Colo., repeatedly called for order: "We don't need so much embellishment. Answer the questions the counsel is asking and I think we'll get to the truth here."
The Ohio Democrat showed up an hour late for the start of Tuesday's hearing, saying he wasn't told to be there. He told committee members that he thought the hearing was going to begin in the afternoon when he was to call his first witnesses.
Hefley said the eight-member House ethics committee had planned to cross-examine Traficant at the beginning of the hearing and was prepared to go forward.
"In the future, when we set the time for the hearing, unless there's some reason in advance, we need you to be here," Hefley told Traficant.
"I apologize to the committee," Traficant said. "If I had known, I would be here. I was on other media broadcasts trying to demean you and everybody else." He later told Hefley he was just joking.
After the nine-week trial in Cleveland during which Traficant defended himself without a lawyer, he was convicted in April of taking kickbacks from employees and soliciting bribes and other gifts from businessmen.
Just like then, Traficant, though not a lawyer, defended himself this week before the congressional panel, which is considering whether to recommend his ejection from Congress. For the first time, he put himself on the witness stand Tuesday.
Stalking around his table, he shouted insults and occasionally profanities into his microphone as he wrote on an easel the names of witnesses he said had lied about him.
"They've gone back 15 years looking for cash transactions," he said of his prosecutors. "They couldn't find one person."
Traficant's testimony Monday followed a meticulous, two-hour summary by committee prosecutor Paul Lewis of the Cleveland trial evidence, which covered more than 10 years of Traficant's term in office. "Throughout his career, the congressman was trading official acts for favors," Lewis said.
Prosecutors have recommended he serve at least 7@1/4 years in prison on the convictions of taking kickbacks from staffers and bribes from businessmen. Sentencing is scheduled for July 30.
The ethics panel will decide whether the convictions represent a "continuing pattern and practice of official misconduct" and, if so, whether they warrant the House expelling the nine-term lawmaker.
Expulsion requires the approval of two-thirds of the House and is a fate that has befallen only member since the Civil War: Rep. Michael Myers, D-Pa., who was tossed out in 1980 for accepting money from undercover FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks seeking favors from Congress.