- The Office of Congressional Ethics voted 6 – 0 to find reason to believe Rep. Newman bribed a political opponent.
- The case now goes to the House Ethics Committee, where it will be reviewed by her peers.
- Newman reportedly promised Iymen Chehade a senior position in her office if he didn't run against her in a primary.
The Office of Congressional Ethics said on Monday that it had found reason to believe that Democratic Rep. Marie Newman of Illinois offered a job to a potential primary opponent in exchange for a job in her congressional office. The body voted 6 – 0 to refer the case to the House Ethics Committee on October 15 of last year.
After unsuccessfully challenging moderate Rep. Dan Lipinski in the 2018 Democratic primary, Newman chose to again challenge the conservative Democrat in the following election. And she began making those preparations soon after her loss.
According to a report released on Monday, Newman may have promised a potential primary challenger, Palestinian-American professor Iymen Chehade, a job as her "foreign policy advisor and either District Director or Legislative Director" in a potential future congressional office after the two met in 2018.
Newman told the body that she sought to hire Chehade because of his knowledge on foreign and Arab-American affairs, which she felt was a shortcoming of her 2018 campaign. "It was clear that he had very specific knowledge around Palestine and Israel that I needed. He had been an expert on it," she told investigators.
The Illinois progressive claimed that she never discussed Chehade's plans to run in 2020, but documents he provided to the body contradict her testimony: in a draft of a potential contract attached to an October 2018 email, Chehade says he will not "announce or submit his candidacy" for that district, and that "in exchange" he would be hired as Chief Foreign Policy Advisor.
Newman, for her part, claimed to be "outraged and incensed" by the idea.
But the two ultimately signed a contract in December of that year laying out the terms of the agreement, including a salary for Chehade ranging between $135,000 and $140,000 annually.
After that job did not materialize for Chehade, he sued Newman in January 2021 to enforce a contract the two had signed.
That lawsuit was then settled in June 2021 and included a nondisclosure agreement, which Chehade cited in declining to sit for an interview with ethics body.
In a statement, Rep. Newman's communication director, Pat Mullane, said the complaint was motivated by politics.
Rep. Newman's legal counsel, seeking to dismiss the case, acknowledged to the House General Counsel that her contract "was violative of House employment and federal contracting rules."
"Recently, a right-wing organization filed a politically-motivated complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) regarding a dismissed lawsuit. The materials produced during the OCE's review overwhelmingly demonstrate that the ethics complaint is completely meritless," he said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for further updates.