It’s a circus.
Charlie Rangel kills his parents and then throws himself at the mercy of the Court because he is an orphan.
OK, not exactly but metaphorically.
Charlie Rangel walked out of his ethics trial yesterday morning.
Complaining bitterly that he was denied the right to have an attorney present, an emotional Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) walked out of his highly publicized public ethics trial Monday morning, an unexpected twist in the ethics inquiry that has tarnished Rangel’s four-decade congressional career.
But Rangel DID have legal representation. He fired them.
Popularity aside, the Harlem Democrat’s coffers seem to have dried up. He has said publicly that he had to fire the prestigious law firm hired to defend him because he ran out of money.
Ran out of money. And there’s the rub. Out of whose money did he run out? His campaign account’s money.
Rangel has paid the law firm more than $1.4 million from his campaign account, according to Federal Election Commission records.
And apparently the campaign account is dry. Now Rangel faces a future he has never known. A future utterly foreign to him. A brutally cold, hostile world.
The world in which you have to pay for things on your own.
The real world.
He got all the advice he needed from the Ethics Committee.
Lofgren noted that Rangel “asked for formal advice from the committee [on covering his legal bills] in September 2008, in March of 2009, in October of 2010 and again in November of 2010 and received informal advice on that in August.”
And then the other shoe drops. The one that really got to Rangel and chilled him to his core. Words that frighten the crap out of those far too long removed from reality.
She also noted that Rangel could have paid legal bills out of his own pocket.
Ouch! Out of his own pocket! Oh the horror! The humanity!
This is the guy whose net worth doubled last year to perhaps as much as $2 million after he “amended” his 2007 financial disclosure statement.
Rangel, who writes tax law and is the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee also “forgot” to report $75000 in rental income from his property in the Dominican Republic because he doesn’t speak Spanish. Maybe Rangel never got to see The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Rangel is getting a life lesson on how it is to be someone not in the Congressional aristocracy, i.e. like you and me. The poor bastard actually has to pay for something out of his own pocket. It’s a bitch not being able to stick US taxpayers with the bill like usual and it has Rangel’s panties in a twist. It’s made him all “emotional.”
Cry me a river.
This sad episode makes abundantly clear the need for affordable universal legal care.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.