House Ethics Committee finds 'substantial reason' to believe freshman Democrat made quid pro quo job offer to rival

(AP Photo by Sara Burnett)

Rep. Marie Newman ran for Illinois’ 3rd congressional district in 2020 with the support of Justice Democrats and an endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She won the election, ousting pro-life Democrat Dan Lipinski. But Rep. Newman is now being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for (allegedly) promising a job to one of her potential rivals in the 2020 race in exchange for his agreement not to enter the race.

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Jazz wrote about this story last week but we’re now getting a look at the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) report and the details look pretty damning. In a 6-0 vote, the OCE board recommended, “that the Committee further review the above allegation concerning Rep. Newman because there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Newman may have promised federal employment to a primary opponent for the purpose of procuring political support.”

Rolling Stone reports that Rep. Newman’s office has dismissed the story in an email to supporters:

In an email sent to campaign stakeholders last Wednesday and obtained by Rolling Stone, Newman said the complaint “has no basis in fact” and calls recent headlines on the subject “not just salacious, but completely wrong.” She described the complaint as the work of a “far-right dark money group” seeking “to damage a strong progressive” in a district Republicans hope to flip this cycle. “There was absolutely no wrongdoing and we have proven that,” she says.

But the OCE report tells a very different story. It contains a copy of an employment contract which Newman and Iymen Chehade signed in 2018. Rep. Newman claims she agreed to hire Chehade because she needed his expertise on Palestinian issues. And, to be fair, there’s some evidence that her inability to address these issues was at least part of the reason she lost when she ran for the same seat in 2018.

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So the issue here is this: Did Newman agree to hire Chehade merely for his expertise or did she do it as a way to keep him out of the primary? Newman claims it’s the former but the OCE report contains an email which says it was the latter:

So Chehade is already gaming out how he will get the inside track on this seat once Newman decides to vacate it. But the email also included an attachment which spelled out the quid pro quo explicitly in a bullet point. “Chehade agrees not to announce or submit his candidacy for election to Congressional Representative of the 3rd District of Illinois. In exchange, Newman will hire Chehade as her Chief Foreign Policy Advisor.”

That seems pretty cut and dry. And Newman’s response to the email was “most of it looks good.” She and Chehade did sign a contract promising to hire him if she won and he didn’t enter the primary, exactly as the email spelled out.

After Newman won the 2020 election, she refused to hire Chehade. He sued her for violating the contract which is how word of its existence first came to light. His lawsuit was settled last summer and Chehade is now employed by Newman’s campaign as a foreign policy expert.

Newman’s latest FEC filings show she did hire Chehade as a foreign policy adviser—only instead of being paid through her congressional office, Chehade was hired through Newman’s campaign.

Chehade has received a total of $54,000 since the second half of 2021, mostly in salary installments of $7,500 a month, but sometimes with additional $2,000 payments. According to the FEC filings, the disbursements to Chehade began on July 1, 2021, just two days after both sides reached a deal to resolve the lawsuit.

That salary appears to make Chehade far and away the highest-paid employee on the congresswoman’s team during the filing period, though Newman’s team now claims campaign manager Ben Hardin has since surpassed Chehade’s salary.

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The Daily Beast notes that it is “highly unusual” for a campaign to hire a highly paid foreign policy adviser, especially since Rep. Newman doesn’t sit on any foreign policy committees in the House. As for the claim that she specifically needed his expertise, she won without it. And Rolling Stone reports she already had a group of advisers on Palestinian issues:

The error in [campaign] strategy had nothing to do with available expertise, former confidantes say. Newman had regularly engaged with local Palestinian community leaders and kept several in her campaign’s inner circle. She had a “kitchen cabinet” of foreign policy advisors she consulted on the Israel-Palestine conflict during her campaigns that included Palestinian expertise. She didn’t need another advisor like Chehade, these sources say.

Both Newman and Chehade signed NDA’s as part of their settlement so neither of them will talk about their current arrangement.

Because of redistricting, Newman is now running for reelection in the 6th district and Chehade is running for election in the 3rd. So it looks like everything is working out well for both of them, so long as the OCE doesn’t conclude they violated the code of ethics. How the OCE could possibly decide there was no violation here despite the email spelling out the quid pro quo is a mystery to me, but strange things happen in Washington, DC.

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