Introducing GovTrack’s Congressional Misconduct Database
We chronicled 372 allegations of misconduct from 1789 to today.
Today we introduce our full Congressional Misconduct Database containing 372 instances of misconduct and alleged misconduct by Members of the United States Congress from 1789 to the present.
So what is in the database? Lots. It is remarkably educational in that you see trends in investigated misconduct that reflect both larger societal concerns of the time and the efforts of Congress to define misconduct. We’ll be discussing what we’ve noticed in the database in a series of posts, starting with sexual harassment.
Sexual Harassment and Abuse
Since November 2017 — — three months ago — — six new ethics cases have been opened or reopened for sexual harassment (Reps. Conyers, Farenthold, Franks, Kihuen, and Meehan, and Sen. Franken). All resigned or announced they won’t seek reelection.
For comparison, in the preceding 34 years (1983 — October 2017), there were nine ethics investigations for sexual harassment which resulted in two censures, one threatened expulsion, one statement of public disapproval, one apology, and one dismissal. Two — — one who was censured and the other who the House ethics committee found violated House rules — — were re-elected at least once more afterwards: Gary Studds and Gus Savage.
The case against current Rep. Alcee Hastings in 2012–2014 over inappropriate comments (many of which he did not deny) and inappropriate contact was dismissed for lack of evidence of conduct that rose to the level of sexual harassment. “[H]ugs are his preferred form of greeting for everyone male or female,” the committee report explained. But behavior often becomes harassment when it is an abuse of power, and it is notable that Hastings’ preference to hug everyone, without regard for whether the contact was welcome, was considered a mitigating factor instead of a damning one.
Finally, when Rep. Dennis Hastert resigned in 2007 there were plenty of blemishes on his career but the worst came when in 2016 he admitted to molesting children while he was a high school coach, as well as to illegal financial maneuvers to hide settlement payments. While these events occurred before and after Hastert was Speaker of the House, they brought new support to accusations that, under his leadership, Rep. Mark Foley escaped adequate punishment for his interactions with House pages in the early 2000s.
Other misconduct in our database
These cases are important, but also corrosive to the soul, so let us leave you with a lighter story. Sen. Hiram Bingham (1924–1933) initially escaped censure in 1929 despite having temporarily replaced his chief of staff with a lobbyist from a manufacturing organization so that the lobbyist could participate in closed sessions on tariffs. However, Bingham was such a sore winner that a couple of weeks after the investigation concluded another senator introduced a resolution of censure for his discourteous behavior and it passed! Many factors contribute to who gets investigated and punished, but personal pique may be underrated as a motivating factor.
The more than 300 other cases of misconduct or alleged misconduct in our database cover all cases of censure and expulsion of members of Congress, all investigations by the House Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the House Committee on Ethics (HCE), and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics (SSCE), as many monetary settlements that we are aware of, e.g. those administered by Congress’s Office of Compliance regarding sexual harassment claims, and other cases that we could find involving law enforcement or a resignation. We worked from existing lists compiled by the House and Senate, Wikipedia, and newspaper articles.
The database can be filtered by type of misconduct (such as bribery and corruption, sexual harassment and abuse) or consequence (such as censure and expulsion).
The investigations, settlements, and resignations in our database do not themselves imply guilt, of course. Conversely, investigations that end without determining guilt do not imply innocence. Further, not all misconduct is treated equally, and the types of misconduct that have had consequences have changed drastically over time.
The Congressional Misconduct Database will be updated as new information becomes available, and we’ll have more posts soon about other interesting cases we found.
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