Work in Progress, Not Proofread, Ignore Any Errors From: Jay Goldberg

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Re: Rangel We all live and believe that we are protected by the Constitution. One cannot, and should not, tolerate blatant violations of our Constitution by those Representatives sworn to uphold and defend it, lest the protections of the Constitution be violated for all. The right to Due Process is not conferred by legislative grace, but by constitutional guarantee and was enshrined in the law over 1000 years ago in the Magna Carta. Republic. *** This Complaint arose as a result of the July 2011 discovery of two extraordinary secret memoranda written by the Chief Counsel of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, R. Blake Chisam, to the Chairwoman of the Committee, Representative Zoe Lofgren, which are attached as Exhibit A to the Complaint. It has been so held since the near beginning of the

This case does not involve the measure of any discipline against Representative Rangel, for the House failed to follow what Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution and its chosen essential requirement, the Rules of its [the Houses] Proceedings, required as a condition precedent for the imposition of discipline.1 The authority to impose discipline was lost when the Committee having jurisdiction over disciplinary matters violated

Representative Rangels Due Process rights and his other fundamental constitutional rights, including his right to confrontation and crossexamination, his right to an unbiased tribunal and his right to the turnover of material that would possibly lead to a different outcome. Representative Rangels rights were violated when only Republican Members of the Adjudicatory panel received secret, substantive,

impermissible ex-parte material from members of the staff of the Chief Counsel of said Committee, which should have resulted in the recusal of at least four Members of the eight Member Adjudicatory tribunal, who were instructed to act as judges and to act free of bias during the proceedings. Representative Rangel lost his right of confrontation and cross-examination,
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Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution reads as follows: Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member. (emphasis added).
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testing the magnitude, veracity and effect of the impermissible ex-parte material. Further, these constitutional violations and violations of

Representative Rangels constitutionally protected rights are even more pronounced, given the false and deceptive statements made by the Committee Chair, Representative Lofgren, and the Ranking Republican Member of the Committee, Representative Bonner, to the effect that the proceedings had been conducted fairly, honestly and without prejudice, which statements were made at a time when they knew this was not so. The result of these

constitutional violations and more is that the House was deprived of its authority to impose any sanction upon Representative Rangel. *** It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. The textual meaning of Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2, as it relates to the matter of discipline, is beyond dispute: compliance with the Rules of its [the Houses] Proceedings is a requirement for the power to discipline a Member. *** The reason this case was not brought earlier is that it was, as late as December 2012, that the Committee, with the biased Members participating,
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voted, taking the position that Members of the staff could secretly deal with the four judge Republican Members. They mistakenly and wrongly relied on the wholly inapposite view that the Rules of its Proceedings permitted such interaction before an Investigative Subcommittee,2 but no rule permitted interaction before a trial jury, and that Rule has been with us as a part of Due Process and fundamental fairness for well over 200 years. The law is also clear that even when one Member of a tribunal is biased, the decision of the full panel is irreparably tainted, even more so, as in this case, where at least four Members were biased as a matter of law. Mr. Chisam stated that what had occurred created a clear and present danger to the requirement that all Members act as impartial judges. Mr. Chisam, and this is so offensive, opined that the conduct of his two staff members furnished the earlier described material may have been motivated by offensive racist beliefs given what they had said within the Hearing of members of the staff. This is a sad day for those under the

The committee has taken a position that a Member is entitled to Due Process. The Proceedings before the Adjudicatory Subcommittee may be likened to those in a criminal proceeding. The Adjudicatory Subcommittee is an adversarial quasi-judicial tribunal with the Membe rs instructed to act impartially and in the capacity comparable to a judge. The proceedings complained of occurred in connection with an Adjudicatory Subcommittee composed for four Republican Members and four Democratic Members.
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mistaken belief that the long arm of racism had ended. But, unhappily and apparently it has not. Constitutionally, since as far back as 1965, the Supreme Court has ruled that a prosecutor, much like Mr. Chisam, must disclose facts which could have changed the outcome of a case, and that such disclosure must be timely made prior to an adversarial hearing. In other words, well before

Representative Rangel chose to leave the hearing room on November 15, 2010, after the House had refused to give him time to secure counsel, Mr. Chisam had been required by the Constitution and its chosen essential requirement, the Rules of its [the Houses] Proceedings, to make available to Representative Rangel the unconstitutional wrongdoing of members of his staff, so that Representative Rangel could have made a wise and intelligent decision to continue with the proceedings. Mr. Chisam stated in the recently discovered memoranda that had Rep. Rangel stayed and called a witness, Mr. Chisam would have made a motion to dismiss all proceedings against Rep. Rangel. Remember, Mr. Chisam states early on that he is providing only some examples of the wrongdoing. Congress does not have an unbridled power to impose discipline. It was the intention of the Framers, and the terms of the language used, to ensure that there be obedience to this provision of the Constitution and its essential
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requirement. The Rules were first enacted at the time the Constitution was ratified, and were codified as recently as 1989 by a law enacted governing the conduct of the House and the Senate, 2 U.S.C. 29d. *** We appeal to the Court that since the Rules, an essential requirement of the Constitution, that being Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 and its essential requirement of the Rules of its Proceedings, which were first enacted at the time the Constitution was ratified and were codified as recently as 1989 by a law enacted to govern the conduct of the House and the Senate in matters of discipline (When the discipline was recorded in The Journal of the Houses Proceedings, required to be kept under Article 1, Section 5, Clause 3 of the Constitution, Rangel was stigmatized now and forever despite that Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 and the Rules of the Houses Proceedings were so violated that he lost his right of Due Process to be protected, and Members of Congress, Members of the Committee, charged with the responsibility of inquiring into matters of discipline violated his fundamental rights. Compounding the wrongdoing was that the Chair, Representative Zoe Lofgren and the Ranking Republican Member, Jo Bonner of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct knowingly, intentionally and wrongly, misrepresented to the House that all proceedings dealing with Rep. Rangel
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had been conducted according to the Constitution and the Rules and that Members acted in compliance with their obligations to be fair and impartial and act as judges. What makes this egregious is that when they made the statement, they knew that wrongdoing, as earlier described, had taken place and the record is then clear that in addition to Rep. Rangels constitutional rights being violated, the Houses right to be fully informed was ignored and the House was misled as to what had occurred. The action of Congress in voting to censure Rep. Rangel cannot stand, given the fact that Congress was the recipient of a false assurance in that the proceedings were conducted in compliance with the commands of the Constitution and the Rules of the its [the Houses] Proceedings. Given that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct ignored constitutional restraints and violated fundamental rights, a predicate for the authority to sanction Rep. Rangel was unsatisfied.