A Democratic congresswoman is facing possible expulsion following a grueling seven-hour Ethics Committee hearing Thursday over allegations she diverted millions of dollars in emergency COVID-19 relief funds into her campaign.
Republican Florida Rep. Greg Steube is prepared to offer a resolution to expel Democratic Florida Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick after her rare public Ethics Committee hearing in which the panel examined 27 counts of alleged House rules violations. The House panel began reviewing the allegations against the Democrat in September 2023 and the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted her on 15 federal charges in November, which could result in a 53-year prison sentence if found guilty.
“This is disgraceful. The American people deserve better than corruption in Congress,” Steube said in an X post on the night of the hearing. “I’m ready to expel Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick!”
The committee’s hearing surrounded allegations that the Florida Democrat used her family’s personal companies to embezzle $5 million in emergency COVID-19 funds — which the State of Florida allegedly mistakenly calculated — into her special election campaign to replace the late former Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings in 2021.
The panel also inspected illegal in-kind campaign contributions from an organization with ties to her former campaign manager who oversaw her 2021 and 2022 campaigns.
Her multiple federal charges include conspiracy, theft of government funds, money laundering, illegal campaign contributions, and falsifying tax documents.
“This is an unjust, baseless, sham indictment — and I am innocent,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a Nov. 20 statement. She did not speak publicly during the Ethics hearing, but passed notes and whispered to her counsel throughout the proceeding.
Cherfilus-McCormick has claimed she’s the target of a political witch hunt, but she sought a pardon from President Donald Trump during last year’s White House Christmas party, according to the Hill.
The Ethics Committee said in a case recap released Wednesday that Cherfilus-McCormick “has made no meaningful argument to rebut these findings in the more than two years that this matter has been ongoing.” The committee’s counsel also testified that Cherfilus-McCormick’s counsel presented little evidence to counter the committee’s findings.
William Barzee, Cherfilus-McCormick’s criminal defense lawyer, claimed being the subject of an Ethics Committee hearing while facing a criminal trial is a “risky endeavor” because the congressional hearing could present different rules of evidence that might influence the witnesses and jurors in her criminal trial.
“The difficulty here is that you’re going to have members of the public who are also potential jurors in the primal matter, hearing about facts they otherwise would never be exposed,” Barzee told the panel. “Those potential jurors can end up on her jury and can include those facts in the decision making in an inappropriate way.”
Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is not on the Ethics Committee panel and is a former public defender, sat in Cherfilus-McCormick’s hearing for its first hour, notably wearing a brown fedora hat.
Elijah Manley, 27, Cherfilus-McCormick’s leading challenger in her August Democratic primary, also attended the proceeding.
“It’s important for the district to have some eyes into this entire process,” Manley told Florida Politics on Thursday. “People are confused back at home, and I want to be able to report back to the district what’s happening. But also, as somebody who’s hoping to succeed the Congresswoman, I think being here is important.”
“It’s an open hearing,” Crockett said Thursday when asked why she attended the proceeding.
The emergency relief funds, which were supposed to amount to $50,000 but became $5 million following a misplaced decimal, were sent to the bank account of Cherfilus-McCormick’s healthcare company, Trinity Healthcare Services, in July 2021. The funds were later funneled into multiple businesses owned by the congresswoman’s family members.
Barzee claimed the money sent to the businesses without proper records or documents was because they ran a “family business” and did not find a reason to hire a lawyer to create documents because Cherfilus-McCormick is Haitian-American.
“In the Haitian American community, it is not unusual for these types of agreements to be made orally, to be made with a handshake,” Barzee told the panel.
The DOJ wrote in a November 2025 press release that the money was sent to other businesses without proper documentation “to disguise its source.”
“Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the release. “No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.”
The House Ethics Committee has not held a public hearing to consider allegations against a lawmaker since 2010 when it found former Democratic New York Rep. Charlie Rangel guilty on 11 ethics charges surrounding tax and rental income violations.
“This is one of the most serious corruption cases involving a sitting member of Congress to come along in years,” Scott Jennings said of Cherfilus-McCormick on his Salem News Channel show Wednesday.
Only six members of Congress have ever been expelled by their colleagues in U.S. history. The most recent was former Republican New York Rep. George Santos in December 2023.
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