Democratic Rep. from California, Adam Schiff, has been hit with an ethics complaint after he released a campaign video which he made in order to launch his nomination for Senator Dianne Fienstein’s seat.
Feinstein recently announced that she is retiring after this term and will not seek reelections in 2024.
Schiff’s campaign video included a clip from the time when Schiff presented his case in favor of Donald Trump’s impeachment on the U.S. Senate floor.
However, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a watchdog group, claimed that Schiff’s campaign video directly violates the congressional rules.
FACT sent a letter to House Ethics Committee in which the group explained:
“Federal law states that ‘appropriations shall be applied only to the objects for which the appropriations were made except as otherwise provided by law. To enforce this law, the ethics rules prohibit Members from using any official resource for campaign or political purposes.”
The letter added:
“‘Official resources’ includes anything funded by taxpayers, such as a Member’s official website, social media accounts, and photographs and video from the House or Senate floor. To make it abundantly clear, both the House ethics rules and Senate rules specifically identify Congressional video of floor proceedings as official resources that Members are prohibited from using for political purposes.”
The letter continued:
“Simply put, under the House ethics rules, a Member is prohibited from using either House or Senate photographs or video because both are official government resources. This includes any photograph or video footage of floor proceedings even if it was reposted from a third-party source, i.e. another website or news organization. As the Ethics Committee has stated, ‘Members may not re-use an image of a floor proceeding published by a third-party, if the Member could not use that image in the first instance,’”
FACT further noted:
“Adam Schiff thought that leading the charge on impeaching Donald Trump would be his golden ticket to the Senate.”
