Ethics Complaints

The House Ethics Committee is currently looking into a series of charges against Newt Gingrich, including allegations that he evaded election laws, abused official resources to promote his political activities, broke rules regarding favors for campaign donors, and evaded tax laws by funding his college course through a nonprofit foundation and a PAC. The mainstream media has limited its ethics coverage mainly to Newt's well-publicized book deal and publicity tour financed by media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The deeper question is whether the political apparatus Newt used to rise to power is corrupt.

One of the charges lodged against Gingrich before the House Ethics Committee alleges that he used a GOPAC employee, Joe Gaylord, as a chief aide in his congressional office, violating strict laws requiring the separation of fund raising and official congressional business.

The other complaints are related to the other two branches of Newt's political machine, his college course and the nonprofit Progress & Freedom Foundation.

In 1993, Gingrich conceived a new means of raising money and increasing his political power: a college course distributed electronically nationwide. In addition to being able to accept secret donations of unlimited size, Gingrich could also promise contributors a tax write-off because his "Renewing American Civilization" course was funded through nonprofit "charitable" foundations.

Gingrich defends the course as a purely academic and "completely nonpartisan" enterprise, but internal documents show otherwise. A fund-raising letter to a lobbyist for the Tobacco Institute is often cited, but an even more telling, but largely overlooked document is a draft outline for the college course that claims a distinct political purpose. The course was also closely connected to GOPAC. Several key GOPAC employees helped develop the class, which was heavily promoted within the GOP, particularly to college Republican chapters.

Also at issue are questions of influence peddling. Gingrich's effort to win access to a college campus, for example, was facilitated by Kennesaw State College business dean Timothy Mescon. While helping Gingrich find a forum at Kennesaw, Mescon was getting help from Gingrich in drumming up business for his consulting firm, the Mescon Group. The relationship is clearly spelled out in an exchange of letters.

The final branch of Newt's machine is the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit think tank set up by former GOPAC director Jeffrey Eisenach in 1993--before he resigned from GOPAC. Legally eligible for tax-deductible contributions, the foundation began sponsoring Gingrich's college course in late 1993.

If the college course was politically neutral, no problem. But if it is a partisan vehicle (as the evidence indicates), then the foundation is in violation of U.S. tax code.

The Progress & Freedom Foundation claims that it is merely "friendly" with Newt. But in addition to the huge chunk of the foundation's budget devoted to Gingrich's college course--about $400,000 in 1994--the foundation's staff, board members, and incorporators have close ties to Gingrich and GOPAC.

Will the ethics charges stick? That depends on the Ethics Committee, whose chair, Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) and other four Republican members all have ties to Gingrich (see our "Will Newt Fall?" ).