New York Times – by WASHINGTON — The House Ethics Committee on Friday ordered Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, to pay a fine of almost $60,000 for using campaign money for personal purposes and for accepting “impermissible gifts.”
After a 14-month investigation that examined 25 trips that Mr. Young took between 2001 and 2013, the committee found that 15 of those trips — to hunting lodges with his family and staff — were “inappropriate.” It also found that Mr. Young, 81, had failed to report certain gifts on his financial disclosure forms.
The committee required Mr. Young to pay the fine from personal money to cover the expenses for several flights on private aircraft, lodging and meals, and even a pair of $434 Le Chameau boots.
The committee further publicly rebuked him in a so-called letter of reproval.
In a statement, Mr. Young said he had already made all of the payments ordered by the committee, and he vowed to better comply with the rules of the House going forward.
“I accept the House Committee on Ethics’ report and regret the oversights it has identified,” Mr. Young said. “There were a number of instances where I failed to exercise due care in complying with the House’s Code of Conduct, and for that I apologize. As the committee indicates in its report, I never ‘made any knowingly false statements to government officials,’ nor did I act ‘corruptly’ or in bad faith.”
Mr. Young was first elected to Congress in 1973 after Alaska’s at-large representative, Nick Begich, a Democrat, had gone missing in a plane crash the previous year.
“It also found that Mr. Young, 81, had failed to report certain gifts on his financial disclosure forms.”
For that alone, the IRS would had any one of us in jail.
I’ll bet that he never pays the fine, either.