With 3 resignations in a week, Congress faces scrutiny for how it handles misconduct

A Florida Democrat indicted for allegedly using disaster relief money to help fund her campaign resigned from Congress on Tuesday as the House Ethics Committee weighed whether to recommend her expulsion.

Up until her announcement, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was one of four House members in recent days who have been under pressure to resign or face expulsion. Three have resigned since last Monday.

Expulsions are extremely rare in Congress, but so is having so many members under such intense scrutiny all at once for various allegations of wrongdoing.

This spate of embattled lawmakers has implications not only for a narrowly-divided Congress, but for the public’s perception of how the institution responds to accusations of corruption and sexual misconduct.

Cherfilus-McCormick is awaiting trial on charges of wire fraud and money laundering — and says she has not received due process. Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., is accused of assault and campaign finance violations, among other offenses, and has told reporters he did nothing wrong.

Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., ultimately resigned from Congress last week amid allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Though he said he has made mistakes, Swalwell has vowed to fight the allegations against him, which he denies. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, also resigned, after admitting to an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.

The Ethics Committee opened investigations into each of them. But in recent days, some members said Congress should not wait for the conclusion of those processes, which can sometimes take years.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., was among the lawmakers calling for the swift expulsion of all four.

“We should all be able to agree on the basics that maybe if you’re sexually harassing or assaulting or have issues of domestic violence or you’re stealing funds from FEMA, maybe you should not be in Congress,” Luna said earlier this month. “Maybe it’s time for you to go home and figure those issues out, not on taxpayer dollars.”

Had Congress moved to expel all four, that would have been more than in the past 165 years.

“Most members don’t want to undo the preferences of the voters,” says former Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Penn.

Why so few members of Congress are expelled

Dent heard about a lot of bad behavior as a member of the House Ethics Committee. From 2015 to 2017, he chaired the panel, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Dent says its members took their responsibility seriously, despite how awkward it can be to police colleagues.

“I’ve had many uncomfortable elevator rides with my colleagues over the years who have been under investigation and I really didn’t feel like talking to them,” he says.

Matthew Glassman, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, says the framers knew Congress needed a way to protect the integrity of the institution. The Constitution allows members to be removed by a two-thirds vote of the chamber, but does not outline what constitutes behavior worthy of expulsion.

Expulsion was used only once, for treason, until the Civil War.

Though many Southern members resigned, Glassman says, many did not.

“You have a fair number of them who don’t, who stay around in the Congress, in many cases openly supporting the Confederacy. Some of them are actually in the Confederate Army taking up arms against the United States military.”

Since that era, only three members have been expelled — most recently Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., in 2023, who had been indicted on charges of wire fraud and identity theft. Two House Democrats were expelled following convictions on bribery charges, in 1980 and 2002.

Glassman, a former staffer for the Congressional Research Service and an expert on congressional history, says it is not that behavior has gotten worse, but that standards have changed.

“A lot of things which we would think of now of abuse of office were very commonplace in the 19th century,” he says. “Honest graft in Tammany Hall 150 years ago was just honest graft. Honest graft is not just against the rules of the House, but it’s illegal too.”

A key reason so few members of Congress have been removed historically is that many resign first, like Swalwell, Gonzales and now Cherfilus-McCormick. But Dent says some lawmakers have learned from President Trump to never admit wrongdoing — so they hang on longer.

“Members would resign because they felt shame,” Dent says about past political eras. “If you don’t feel shame and you’re not embarrassed, you’re not going to care about what people say about you.”

Cherfilus-McCormick did not resign until just before the Ethics Committee, which had already found her responsible for more than two dozen violations, was set to hand down a sanctions recommendation after a two-year investigation. The committee loses jurisdiction once a lawmaker leaves office.

“Rather than play these political games, I choose to step aside,” she wrote in a statement. “We should be very careful about the precedent we are setting. In this country we do not punish people before due process is complete.”

Mills told reporters on Tuesday that he has no plans to resign.

“There is zero criminal and or civil cases which are opened against me. I’ve never been charged, found guilty of anything of any sort,” Mills said. “I’ve never been indicted for any type of fraud or stealing of federal funds. So why would I resign?”

An Ethics Committee investigation into his conduct is ongoing.

Some lawmakers want to move more swiftly to address bad behavior

Ethics cases can go slowly. Dent says members deserve due process, and as investigators turn over more stones, probes can expand.

But some lawmakers are now more willing to threaten expulsion or censure votes, which any member can force, without a conviction, ethics committee recommendation or blessing from leadership.

Glassman says a growing number of censure and expulsion resolutions are being proposed by back-bench members eager to score political points. Other times they are targeting genuine misconduct. And in both cases, individual members feel more empowered to act unilaterally.

“You get to Congress in 1990 and how could you ever reach a national audience?” Glassman says. “Nowadays you come with a massive megaphone via social media.”

That also means the public is more tuned in. Responding to criticism, the House Ethics Committee published a letter this week saying it’s dedicated to “ensuring that any individuals responsible for misconduct are held responsible.”

Lawmakers and aides on both sides of the aisle have acknowledged that Congress can do more to prevent and promptly address sexual misconduct within their ranks.

“There are better ways of ensuring that people in vulnerable situations … have access to a way in which they can get recourse and relief, for sure,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said last week. “And if there is a better way to do that, I’m certainly open to it.”

“There’s a widespread belief that members of Congress don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else,” Glassman says. “When these scandals come to light, it feeds that perception. And when the House doesn’t do anything about it, it feeds that perception [too].”

Still, pushing a colleague out involves high stakes when the chamber is so thinly-divided. With Cherfilus-McCormick’s resignation, there are now 218 Republican-aligned members in the House to 213 Democrats. That leaves the GOP with a slightly larger margin — the party can now lose two members on any vote.

But when a member threatens the standing of the institution or the party’s ability to keep its majority in upcoming elections, Dent says, lawmakers may decide booting them is worth the risk.