PARTY ETHOS: GOP’s latest candidate for Speaker faced ethics investigation over past arrests
In the fourth round of voting for Speaker of the House, the Never-Kevin caucus put forth a new candidate, Byron Donalds.
Donalds isn’t exactly the spotlight-hog or ‘firebrand’ that many in his party aspire to be, but he’s got something else in common with his cohort: at least one brush with the ethics committee over past criminal charges.
Donalds has two arrests in his history, one on marijuana charges and the other for bribery.
The bribery charge was dismissed and expunged, and a marijuana charge — especially one from a quarter-century ago, dismissed before trial through a diversion program — is hardly any measure of a person’s ethics, but it’s not the cannabis that raises questions.
The issue is that Donalds has been accused of lying about his past on official documents.
Kelly Lichter, who served with him on the board of a charter school in 2014, filed a complaint with the ethics committee (ultimately dismissed) in 2020, sharing documents on which she says he denied having ever been arrested or charged with a crime.
Donalds argued that he was not obligated to report the expunged bribery charge under Florida law, that the marijuana charge was dismissed, and that Lichter was only on the attack because he was polling well.
Florida Political Review reports:
“Most notably, the complaint filed by Lichter included parts of his application submitted to the Department of Education to serve on the Florida SouthWestern State College board of trustees. The form includes a question asking whether the applicant has ever been ‘arrested, charged, or indicted for violation of any federal, state, county, or municipal law, regulation, or ordinance.'”
A past marijuana charge could have been a more significant barrier to being elected as a Republican than either lying on official documents or an ethics complaint, but Donalds prevailed in 2020, and was re-elected in 2022.
On Wednesday, Donalds was nominated by Chip Roy as a candidate in the fourth round of voting for House Speaker, receiving 20 of the 433 votes cast, with Democrat Hakeem Jeffries recieving 212 and Kevin McCarthy netting 201.
He was nominated again by Lauren Boebert in the fifth round, and fared no better, with the exact same final vote tally.
