Ethics & Accountability


We are challenging ethics abuses and transparency issues and demanding accountability from Congress and the Executive Branch, because that’s what the American people deserve.

Tag Archive for: Ethics & Accountability

The GOP Is Abandoning The Rule Of Law

Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note  |  July 27, 2023 The rule of law is a foundational principle of our country and at the heart of our civilization. But in recent years, Republican officeholders have been abandoning the rule of law and opting instead for raw partisan politics, often at any cost. This started with former President […]

D21 Applauds Senate Judiciary Committee Members Who Voted To Advance Supreme Court Code Of Ethics Measure; Urges Full Senate To Pass Legislation

Statement of D21 President Fred Wertheimer “It is inexplicable and indefensible that the Supreme Court has failed to adopt the same kind of ethics code that applies to every other part of our government.”  On Thursday afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act (S. 359) by a Democratic party-line […]

Op-Ed: Jim Jordan Showed On His First Day How Unfit He Is To Lead The House Judiciary Committee

This week, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) gaveled in the first hearing in what he promised will be a crusade against the Biden Administration: “[W]e won’t stop until we get the truth to fix the problem for the American people.” The hearing was supposedly about the “border crisis.” But, the hearing had little to do with […]

Pence Document Case Shows It’s Time for New Protocols

This op-ed appeared in Newsweek. Pence Document Case Shows It’s Time for New Protocols By: Norman Eisen, Joshua Stanton, and Fred Wertheimer  This week, we learned former Vice President Mike Pence was added to the list of politicians who have improperly handled classified materials. Unless evidence emerges to the contrary, we take Pence at his word that he didn’t […]

39 GOP Freshmen Vote To Gut A House Ethics Office & Jim Jordan Plans His Hypocritical Attacks

Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | January 12, 2023 They came to Washington last week ready to represent the constituents who had given them the honor of serving in Congress. They were 39 freshman Republican House Members. Harsh reality quickly set in. Last week, they sat around as a Greek chorus while 20 extremist Republicans forced […]

George Santos’s Long Trail Of Lies, Deceptions, And Distortions

Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | January 5, 2023 “There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible, and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths […]

D21 Urges House Ethics Committee To Expeditiously Conduct Investigation Of Rep. George Santos

Democracy 21 today urged the House Ethics Committee to expeditiously and “on its own initiative” conduct an investigation of Representative George Santos (R-NY), who will be sworn in today. “An expeditious investigation of Rep. Santos will show beyond any reasonable doubt that because of his duplicitous campaign and his egregious, massive deception of the voters […]

D21 President Fred Wertheimer On House GOP Effort To Gut Office Of Congressional Ethics

Statement Of Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer Buried in the House Rules that House Republicans will propose and consider as an early order of business are provisions designed to gut the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The OCE was created in 2008 and has served the nation and the House well in protecting against ethics […]

Eisen/Wertheimer In Just Security: Was DeSantis Shipping Migrants To Martha’s Vineyard A Crime?

“The treatment of the Migrants who were transported from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard has gripped the nation. There can be little doubt that it was wrong,” Amb. Norman Eisen (ret.) and Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer write in a detailed analysis of the recent actions of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis published today in Just Security. In a […]

D21, Eisen, Common Cause: Supreme Court Must Adopt Code Of Conduct And Strengthen Recusal Procedures

Facing a crisis from the loss of public confidence, the Supreme Court must adopt a Code of Conduct and strengthen its internal procedures for applying conflict-of-interest standards for a Justice to recuse from cases pending before the Court, three government watchdogs wrote in letters sent today to Chief Justice John Roberts, and to Senate Judiciary […]