Stevens Urged to Relinquish 'Plum' Assignment

31 Jul 2007 // Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) and Taxpayers for Common Sense are demanding that Sen. Ted Stevens step down from committee assignments after Monday’s raid by the FBI.

Crew said Stevens “should immediately step down from his position on the Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies.” And TCS urged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to ask Stevens “to temporarily recuse himself from his committee assignments until the federal criminal investigation into his activities has been resolved.”

On Monday, federal agents searched Stevens’s Alaska home as part of a widening public-corruption investigation in Congress and the Alaska state legislature. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that prosecutors are investigating whether the 83-year-old Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican, accepted bribes or unreported gifts from oilfield-engineering firm VECO Corp. It also reported that another Alaska Republican, Rep. Don Young, is under criminal investigation in the same case.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Crew, said in a statement that senators whose property, following the House example. “Senator Stevens, who sits on the subcommittee responsible for funding the Justice Department, which is conducting a probe into his potentially criminal activities, should immediately resign his position on the Appropriations committee,” she said.

TCS President Ryan Alexander, in a letter to McConnell, also pointed to the House, saying Republican Leader John Boehner “drew a proverbial ethics line in the sand that he will not cross” when he urged Reps. Rick Renzi of Arizona and John Doolittle of California to give up committee assignments after FBI raids.