Another member of Congress, Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, has resigned in the wake of a scandal.

 

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. Fox News/AP.

Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick has resigned in the wake of a major scandal. Fox News. The Florida Democrat was accused of stealing Covid relief funds and has been indicted by a grand jury. The House Ethics panel found that she had stolen the funds and there were preparations being made to expel her from congress. She has denied wrongdoing and said she was resigning to help her constituents. She is the third member of Congress to resign in a week after Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez did so last week due to separate sex scandals. A fourth member of Congress, Cory Mills, who has been accused of domestic abuse and stolen valor, could face expulsion as well, though the House Ethics committee has not ruled on his case yet.  

My Comment:

This happened yesterday, but it was a pretty slow news day. And it is an important story. McCormick was pretty obviously guilty of the crimes she was accused of and it was pretty clear that she was going to be expelled from congress. 

So why did she resign? I am guessing it was to help with her criminal trial. She's facing a very long sentence and I think she is probably going to go to trial. If she was expelled from Congress it would be a huge problem for her even though I would think that the judge would want to keep that under wraps to the Jury. Still, why take the risk of a savvy juror knowing that she was expelled from Congress? 

Plus it allows her to save a little face. It's absolutely humiliating to be expelled from Congress, which is why Swalwell and Gonzalez resigned as well. In those cases neither man had faced anything like a fair trail but both were perceived as guilty enough to kick out so they resigned. A similar thing happened here. 

This does have implications for the control of the house. When Swalwell and Gonzalez resigned, it didn't matter because they were both from separate parties. But with McCormick resigning, there is a potential gain of a seat for the Republican Party. The GOP's lead there has been very narrow for awhile now so extending that could be a victory for them.   

The question now is if Cory Mills survives. Unlike McCormick the accusations against him haven't been vetted and there hasn't been a flow of new accusations against him. If the Ethics Committee does find him responsible for the stolen valor and domestic abuse allegations, he will be out too. But so far he hasn't been. 

Nancy Mace has introduced an expulsion of Mills but supposedly he's doing the same thing to her. I think he has a point, he deserves some due process for the accusations against him. And I don't believe for a second that Mace is doing it for anything other than her own publicity. Either way though it's very possible that we will see another tit for tat resignation in the wake of the McCormick resignation.