WASHINGTON — Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel has new worries.
The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct — which already is probing a number of allegations against the Harlem Democrat — announced it was opening another investigation of the powerful Ways and Means chairman.
In the latest twist, the panel will examine whether Rangel and four other lawmakers violated House rules when they took off on what appear to be corporate-sponsored Caribbean junkets.
The Post first reported in September that Rangel may have violated House rules, after Congress passed restrictions that barred members from accepting trips longer than two days if corporations that have lobbyists are paying for or organizing any part of the trip.
Although Rangel listed only the nonprofit Carib News, a New York-based Caribbean newspaper, as the sponsor of a 2007 trip, materials from the event listed such heavy hitters as AT&T, HSBC, Sandals and Pfizer as corporate sponsors.
Rangel and others went to the conference again last November, but this time Peter Flaherty, president of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, also went, in an effort to expose wrongdoing by the lawmakers.
Flaherty told The Post earlier this month that he had turned over to the ethics panel photos he snapped at the conference that show the logos of large corporations that spend millions on lobbying each year, including Pfizer, Citigroup and American Airlines.
The statement released yesterday by the ethics panel said an investigative subcommittee would “have full jurisdiction to conduct a full and complete inquiry into allegations that have arisen regarding the sponsorship of the travel in 2007 and 2008.”
Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), a former judge, is leading the new probe.
Rangel told The Post last month that he believed the wide-ranging investigation into his conduct, which began last year, would be wrapping up by “early July.”
The ethics committee launched an investigation of Rangel last September and has since expanded the probe to cover a number of unrelated possible violations.
Those include allegations that Rangel used congressional stationery to seek donations from companies with business before the committee that he chairs for an educational center named after him, rented multiple rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem that were each intended to be primary households, failed to pay taxes on rental income from his Caribbean vacation home, stored a broken-down car in a House garage at taxpayer expense, and preserved a tax loophole for an oil-drilling company at the same time that one of that firm’s executives pledged $1 million to the Rangel Center.
Rangel’s office did not respond yesterday to e-mail and phone requests for comment on the latest investigation.