WASHINGTON — The third-highest-ranking House Democrat — a fellow member of the Congressional Black Caucus — yesterday pleaded for Rep. Charles Rangel to cut a deal to avoid an embarrassing ethics trial.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) said the tainted Harlem Democrat should admit wrongdoing to settle the 13 violations alleged by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
“I think that Charlie Rangel made it very clear in all the discussions I had with him . . . that he was willing to stipulate to all the sworn testimony that [was] made regarding these 13 allegations,” he said on MSNBC.
“Once a stipulation is made like that, the groundwork is there for a resolution to be had short of any kind of trial. So I would hope that we can get this done,” said Clyburn.
Democrats, already fearful of getting throttled at the polls in November, are dreading a public airing of Rangel’s ethical misdeeds at a hearing before the ethics panel’s adjudicatory subcommittee — just weeks before the elections.
A two-year House ethics probe found a “pattern” of rule breaking by Rangel, including failing to report $1.7 million in personal assets over the years and using his office to raise money for his namesake center at City College of New York — stories first reported in The Post.
Nearly a dozen struggling House Democrats have called on Rangel to resign and end the painful inquisition that this year forced him to give up the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee.
State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV — Rangel’s chief primary opponent — urged the 20-term incumbent to hit the road to help prevent a GOP takeover of Congress this fall.
“Everyone from the president of the United States on down wants him to leave for the good of the nation,” said Powell, whose father held the Harlem congressional seat before being unseated by Rangel in 1970.
“The violations and charges against Rangel are very clear,” Powell said. President Obama last week said Rangel, 80, should end his career with “dignity,” though a White House spokesman yesterday said Obama wasn’t trying to nudge Rangel out.
“When it comes to this process, he’s just not going to put his thumb on the scale of its outcome,” spokesman Bill Burton told reporters.
Meanwhile, Rangel is still planning to hold a birthday celebration and fundraiser on Aug. 11 at the Plaza, it was reported last night.
A video invitation has been posted on his Web site, according to myFOXny.com. His campaign office told the station that no one has called to cancel.
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile in NY