A top government group says a Florida lawmaker did some very wrong things while in office. On Thursday, the House Ethics Committee released a lengthy report on Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.
Following an investigation, the panel claims they found “substantial evidence” that the Congresswoman broke serious rules, using her position to help herself rather than the people she represents.
The findings paint a messy picture of how the office was run. According to the report, Cherfilus-McCormick allegedly steered community funding—taxpayer money meant for public projects—into a private, for-profit company.
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The committee also claims she accepted campaign donations that were directly tied to official actions she took in Congress. Essentially, the report suggests a “pay-to-play” environment where government power was traded for personal and political gain.
This isn’t the only legal trouble the Florida Democrat is dealing with right now. Many of the details in the Ethics report line up with a federal criminal case already moving through the courts.
Last November, prosecutors indicted her on charges of stealing and laundering $5 million in federal relief funds. Those funds were supposed to help people during the pandemic, but officials say she diverted the money to fuel her own run for Congress.
Cherfilus-McCormick isn’t staying quiet, though. In a long response included in the report, she fired back at the investigators. She denied every single allegation of wrongdoing and officially asked for all the charges to be tossed out. She maintains that she has done nothing wrong and that the claims against her are baseless.
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The situation is far from over. The Ethics Committee has now set up a special group to hold a formal hearing on the matter.
That hearing is scheduled for March, where the evidence will be laid out in detail.
For now, Cherfilus-McCormick remains in office, but the pressure from both the ethics panel and federal prosecutors is reaching a boiling point.
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