A day after surviving a GOP-sponsored vote to take away his House Ways & Means gavel, Charlie Rangel was again in the news. The House Ethics Committee voted unanimously to expand their investigation to Rangel's personal disclosure forms. Earlier this year, Rangel quietly amended these forms, reporting an additional $600,000 in income going back to 2001. The committee had been unaware of these changes until they were reported in the press in August. At Rangel's request, the committee had already been looking into his sub-leasing of rent-stabilized apartments near his home in Harlem, his failure to report income from a vacation rental house in the Dominican Republican and his fundraising for the Charlie B. Rangel Center at New York's City College.
The committee's work has already lasted more than a year and, they revealed today, they've issued more than 150 subpoenas relating to the case. They've also “interviewed approximately 34 witnesses resulting in over 2,100 pages of transcripts; reviewed and analyzed over 12,000 pages of documents; and held over 30 investigative subcommittee meetings,” Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Jo Bonner, the committees top Democrat and Republican, respectively, said in a joint statement.