Pat Dollard

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By DAPHNE RETTER – (NYPost)

WASHINGTON – Under fire for dragging her feet on the probe of embattled Rep. Charles Rangel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday an investigation of the Harlem Democrat will be finished by Jan. 3.

“In September I called on the House Ethics Committee to look into issues raised by news reports on Chairman Rangel,” Pelosi said in a statement.

“I have been assured the report will be completed by the end of this session of Congress.”

Republican critics and watchdog groups have been attacking Pelosi and the Ethics Committee for a lack of action in the Rangel case.

Meanwhile, a watchdog group filed a new ethics complaint against Rangel, calling for congressional investigators to broaden their ongoing probe.

Kenneth Boehm, chairman of The National Legal and Policy Center, said the complaint was based largely on a Nov. 23 Post story and the organization’s own research, which showed the Harlem Democrat improperly received Washington’s homestead-tax exemption for at least several years.

Pelosi Says Inquiry Into Ethics Questions Concerning Rangel Will Move Swiftly

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ -(NYTimes)

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday that she expected a quick resolution to a wide-ranging House investigation into ethical questions surrounding Representative Charles B. Rangel, the powerful Democrat from New York.

In a two-paragraph statement released late Wednesday, just as the Capitol was shutting down for Thanksgiving, Ms. Pelosi said that the House ethics committee investigating the congressman was moving to conclude its work and issue a report by early next year, just before the start of the new legislative session.

“I look forward to reviewing the report at that time,” she said in the statement.

The relatively quick timetable that Mrs. Pelosi outlined was striking, given that previous internal inquiries in Congress have tended to drag out for years. It seemed to underscore the political pressure that the Democratic Party leadership is feeling to get the Rangel matter resolved before the start of the new legislative session next year.

Republicans have been sharply critical of Mr. Rangel, saying he has made a mockery of the Democratic Party’s pledge to clean up Washington’s political culture. Republicans have also demanded that he step down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the panel that writes the nation’s tax laws.

In her statement, Ms. Pelosi offered no words of support for the congressman. The statement came two days after The New York Times reported that Mr. Rangel undertook an effort to preserve a tax loophole for an oil-drilling company at the same time that its chief executive pledged $1 million to a City College of New York school that will bear the congressman’s name.

Mr. Rangel, a 19-term congressman, has been under scrutiny since July, when The Times reported that a developer had allowed him to lease rent-stabilized apartments, including one that he used as a fund-raising office, in violation of state regulations.

He has since drawn criticism on other issues: his use of Congressional stationery to seek donations for a City University of New York school of public service that will bear his name; his failure to report on federal or state tax returns that he earned more than $75,000 in rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988; and his failure to report that he had paid no interest for more than a decade on a mortgage extended to him to buy the villa.

Mr. Rangel, who is 78, has attempted to defuse the criticism by calling on the House ethics committee to review his various dealings and by assuring the public that he had “done nothing morally wrong.”

Mr. Rangel has said that he had never helped or even met the landlord who had allowed the congressman to save thousands of dollars each year by allowing him to occupy several rent-stabilized apartments. He also said he had never used his power or public position to help any of the business leaders or foundations that he had asked to support the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York..

Mr. Rangel also described his failure to disclose his income from the beach villa — or to pay taxes on it — as an unintentional oversight by his staff, his wife and himself. In September, he paid more than $10,000 in back taxes to the federal, state and city governments.