Days before Thursday’s congressional hearing on D.C. statehood, House Republicans are urging the Democratic majority to invite D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D) to testify at a time when he faces ethical and legal investigations.
“As our Committee considers legislation concerning DC Statehood, the Committee must fully assess the cloud of scandal surrounding DC Councilmember Jack Evans,” Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post.
Jordan and Meadows are the ranking Republicans on, respectively, the Oversight Committee and its government operations subcommittee.
It appeared unlikely that Cummings would honor the minority request, so the letter appeared designed to call attention to the Evans controversy at a time when D.C. officials are making a concerted push for statehood. Critics have long cited political corruption in the District as a reason to deny it statehood or congressional voting rights.
The Oversight Committee will hold a high-profile hearing Thursday on a bill to grant D.C. statehood. It will be the first congressional hearing on the issue in 25 years.
At a Monday news conference, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) criticized attempts to tie the ethics scandal surrounding Evans to the D.C. statehood cause.
“Allegations of inappropriate conduct are not unique to the District,” Mendelson, one of the witnesses at the statehood hearing, said. “It has happened in the past, but not very often in the District. “In my view, that’s not in any way disqualifying of whether citizens of the District should have full rights of citizenship and a vote for members of Congress.”
In sending the letter to Cummings, the two Republicans also released selected confidential Metro documents that they said “describe the extent of Evans’s self-dealing and the lengths that Evans and another representative of DC, [former Metro board member] Corbett Price, were willing to go to in an attempt to derail the investigation into Evans’s conduct.”
Those documents were among more than 900 pages of confidential materials previously obtained and reported by The Washington Post. Together with interviews with current and former Metro officials, they showed that Evans threatened the jobs of the transit agency’s top lawyer and board secretary in an effort to keep secret a finding that he committed an ethics violation.
Evans’s lawyer has said Evans may have said things in anger that he regretted and for which he apologized, but that he never intended that anybody be fired.
Evans already was forced to resign from the Metro board, which he chaired, after the board’s ethics committee found he violated ethics rules by failing to disclose a conflict of interest with a parking company. The D.C. Council has retained an outside law firm to investigate whether Evans has conflicts of interest. Federal grand jury subpoenas also have been issued regarding Evans, and the FBI has searched his home.
The GOP action Monday was the second in a week designed to link Evans to the statehood debate. On Sept. 10, Jordan and Meadows wrote Cummings and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), the government operations subcommittee chairman, asking that committee staff conduct transcribed interviews with Evans and four current and former Metro officials.
Cummings and Connolly did not agree, and instead asked Metro Inspector General Geoffrey Cherrington to investigate the agency’s probe of Evans, including the conduct of Evans and Price.
In the Tuesday letter, Jordan and Meadows said that while they “appreciate” the inspector general’s action, “it is not a substitute for the Committee’s oversight.”
Noting that Evans is the D.C. Council’s longest-serving member and until recently was chairman of the council’s finance committee, they said Evans “has direct and unique knowledge about the state of DC government and its fiscal health, and the ability of current officials to represent the interests of DC residents.”
The letter said the D.C. statehood bill, if signed into law, “would elevate Evans to the position of state legislator. In light of allegations that Evans exploited his official position with the DC government to engage in self-dealing for personal financial gain, Members must fully understand the nature and extent of Evans’s action to properly assess and consider [the statehood bill].”
Fenit Nirappil contributed to this report.