Late Friday Newsdump: House Ethics Committee Finds Mean Jean Schmidt Took Bribes From A Foreign Power

Mean Jean Schmidt wasn't born with that name. Her parents christened her with the far more ladylike Jeannette Marie Hoffman. The Schmidt part came in when she married shady stockbroker Peter Schmidt, and she earned the "Mean" after her shocking debut on the House floor (November 18, 2005), when she started screeching at respected ex-Marine and war hero Jack Murtha that he was a coward for wanting to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, deceptively blaming the entire incident on another Ohio right-wing kook, state Rep. Danny Bubp. Schmidt was ordered by John Boehner to lay low, but she's like a Tourette's victim and was soon accusing Obama of having been born in another country and not being constitutionally President of the United States.

Schmidt hasn't had any impact at all in Congress and is widely considered an embarrassment and one of the least influential members of the House. The only other thing she's known for is her dogged opposition to the legitimate aspirations of the Armenian-American community. Schmidt, a dim bulb, isn't exactly someone would expect to even know anything about Armenia or Armenians. But she has been taking bribes from shady Turkish sources and helps run their anti-Armenian efforts. Friday the House Ethics Committee issued their report on her corruption, but decided not to recommend expulsion or arrest, claiming, in effect, that she was too dumb to know she had violated House rules. You have to be pretty dumb to not know taking bribes is against the rules... and the law.

According to the OCE referral, Representative Schmidt received an impermissible gift from the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) when lawyers provided legal services to Representative Schmidt in at least three related matters and then sent bills for their fees to the TCA, which paid those bills on an ongoing basis. According to aCE's referral, between 2008 and 2010 TCA actually paid her lawyers, who claimed to be acting as the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund (TALDF), a project of TCA, approximately $500,000 for legal services provided to Representative Schmidt. Neither the Committee nor, according to the evidence, Representative Schmidt was aware of these payments when the Committee previously provided advice to Representative Schmidt regarding her options for paying legal fees in the various proceedings.

The Committee's review of the matter indicated that Representative Schmidt did, in fact, receive an impermissible gift from TCA as aCE has alleged, and therefore the Committee did not dismiss the aCE matter. However, the Committee has found that Representative Schmidt's lawyers failed to inform her of their payment arrangement with TCA, and made false and misleading statements to her about their relationship with TCA and TALDF. Because Representative Schmidt did not know she was receiving a gift from TCA, the Committee has determined that no sanction is appropriate in this case. However, the gift was impermissible, and Representative Schmidt must now disclose and repay the gift. Representative Schmidt has worked in good faith with the Committee since September 2009 to determine the appropriate ways to pay her lawyers.

Through a letter to Representative Schmidt issued contemporaneously with the Committee's Report, the Committee has given her guidance on how to appropriately repay the bills which were paid by TCA. In sum, Representative Schmidt must: 1) ensure that TCA does not pay for any further legal services on her behalf; 2) pay from a permissible source the lawyers associated with TALDF for all legal services they performed to date; 3) amend her 2009 and 2010 Financial Disclosure Statements to disclose the gifts from TCA; and 4) disclose any unpaid legal fees from TCA as liabilities on her future Financial Disclosure Statements, until the lawyers associated with TALDF have been repaid in full. This remedy requires any attorney who was actually paid with TCA funds to first agree that they will repay the fees TCA originally paid to them.

David Krikorian, a rival who brought Mean Jean's criminal behavior to light and who Mean Jean is suing for defamation of her "good" character, said, "The Ethics Committee proved that we were right all along-- Rep Schmidt has received a half a million dollars in improper gifts from the Turkish Coalition of America... Personally I find it hard to believe that Jean Schmidt did not know the facts regarding her own attorneys in legal actions which she commenced in her own name-- I find that to be laughable! The American people are tired of Congressmen and women who break the rules and get away with it by blaming someone else-- the the people of Ohio's second district deserve better than an ignorant Congresswoman."