WASHINGTON — The key sticking point in Rep. Charles Rangel’s negotiations last night with the House Ethics Committee over his scandals was his refusal to admit wrongdoing in making improper solicitations for a center named after him at CCNY, The Post has learned.
The deal-breaker emerged as Rangel was playing a high-stakes game of chicken with attorneys for the panel over the terms of a settlement that would allow him to avoid the potentially damaging trial in the House, which is due to start today at 1 p.m.
“He feels, I think very strongly, that he has not done anything that was wrong,” said a Democratic member of the House in Rangel’s camp. The supporter said Rangel was drawing a line in the sand on the matter of his solicitations of big-bucks contributions from corporations for the Charles Rangel Center for Public Affairs at CCNY — a story The Post first broke in 2007.
Such an admission — particularly if investigators conclude that Rangel provided a legislative favor to a corporate donor, as has been reported — could also leave Rangel open to potential criminal prosecution.
Rangel, a 40-year lawmaker and Korean War vet who values his reputation, bristles at the idea of admitting something so grave.
“That’s the whole thing — there was nothing in it for [him]. He didn’t make money. What’s the big deal?” asked the lawmaker.
Rangel is prepared to say — and the Ethics Committee may be will ing to accept — that at least some of the other ethical violations of which he’s accused were inadvertent oversights. Those might include his failure for years to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets on his financial-disclosure forms, first revealed by The Post.
“That’s the thing he’s prepared to acknowledge. There was some sloppiness,” said the lawmaker. “That doesn’t make him guilty of any major infraction.”
But the ethics panel, which consists of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, is insisting that Rangel must make some type of admission of intentional wrongdoing following its two-year investigation.
A person in the ethics panel meeting room was heard saying emphatically yesterday: “The train is leaving the station and we have our own reputation to worry about.”
According to the House Ethics Manual, members must act “at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House.”
Asked whether he would make a deal, Rangel told reporters, “It depends what the settlement is.”
Even with his career hanging in the balance, Rangel spoke to the National Urban League yesterday in Washington, where he expressed fighting spirit and didn’t mention the ethics controversy, unless it was metaphorically.
“Whether it’s personal or political, we all know that life ain’t been no crystal stair,” Rangel said, quoting a Langston Hughes poem.
“We can’t give up and . . . we can’t give in. And all I can promise you is, when the sun is shining and everything is settled, we once again will be standing together with dignity and with honor.”
A New York Democratic lawmaker said: “I don’t wish ill on Charlie, but he has a tough decision to make. If it goes to trial, the Republicans will be against him and the Democrats would be reluctant to cut him a break. This is not a jury trial.”
But, Rangel has told colleagues he’ll understand if fellow Democrats abandon him, Politico reported.
“I know you love me, but love yourself more,” the Web site said Rangel joked to one Dem.
An eight-member bipartisan subcommittee of Ethics Committee members is scheduled to meet today to begin Rangel’s trial, when for the first time the full range of charges found to be “substantially” true will be revealed.
When the full trial is due to start in September, Rangel gets a chance to defend himself, though he doesn’t have a defined role in today’s proceedings.
Additional reporting by Charles Hurt in Washington