Charlie Rangel may be a Congressman from New York, but he’s also the King of Chutzpah.
The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is being investigated for a wide range of ethical lapses (“lapses” is probably an inappropriate word because it implies that this latest incident is a temporary break in otherwise ethical behavior, but there is no evidence that Rangel has ever been ethical).
The New York Post reports the sordid details:
Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.
The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee — failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.
In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.
But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.
Among other tax issues, Rangel low-balled his income over a period of years. He owes taxes on new Jersey property he’s owned for 15 years but never revealed. He neglected to report stock transactions. He ignored profits from various business deals. And he failed to report other outside income.
Rangel says it’s all just one big misunderstanding. As in “Don’t you understand that I’m in Congress and the laws we write don’t apply to us?”
Source: New York Post, Wall Street Journal
