Congressional Ethics

“When you have somebody who had almost no assets and now suddenly has millions—the question is, who does he owe allegiance to?” said Susan Lerner, executive director of the government-watchdog group Common Cause New York.

"When the referees themselves don't follow the rules it sends a bad signal that the rules might not really matter," Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, told Insider. "People who are in charge of ethics enforcement should be the No. 1 champions of fully complying with the letter and spirit of the law and all relevant regulations."

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the government reform group Common Cause, called on Mr. Santos to step down and urged the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics and federal prosecutors to investigate.

No American is above the law. That includes former Presidents and their advisors. Donald Trump and those who aided and abetted his attempted coup remain a clear and present danger to our democracy. The members of the nonpartisan January 6th Select Committee deserve the nation’s thanks for investigating and publicly exposing the months-long plot waged by Trump and his associates, that appears to have amounted to a criminal conspiracy to overturn the will of the people and subvert the results of the 2020 election so that he could remain in power.

“It’s cross ideological,” says Aaron Scherb, who keeps an eye on Congress for Common Cause, the good-government watchdog group. “All sorts of crypto players throw their money around, to progressive causes, conservative causes.”

Reasons for these violations range from lawmakers "being sloppy to just not caring about stock disclosure," said Aaron Scherb of nonpartisan government reform group Common Cause.