Illinois Democrat Congresswoman slammed for allegedly bribing her staff to get a political rival not to run against her.
According to the reports, Chicago-area Democrat Rep. Marie Newman allegedly offered Iymen Hamman Chehade an incentive not to run against her.
“At the start of her 2020 campaign, Rep. Newman made Mr. Chehade certain promises about future employment in her congressional office. Those promises were reduced to a contract signed by both parties,” the independent watchdog OCE said.
Congresswoman in hot water over job offer to get rival not to run https://t.co/ei2GBqgmJf pic.twitter.com/OeXYxldzie
— New York Post (@nypost) January 25, 2022
However, the issue started when Chehade allegedly sued Rep. Newman for breach of contract after he wasn’t ultimately hired as promised.
“In 2021, after Rep. Newman did not hire Mr. Chehade, he sued to enforce the contract, claiming that he decided not to run for the 2020 congressional seat in reliance of her promise to hire him as a foreign policy advisor and either District Director or Legislative Director in her congressional office.”
Legal documents also revealed that Newman and her legal counsel “acknowledged that her contract was violative of House employment and federal contracting rules” and argued that the OCE finding “fails to mention that Rep. Newman came from a business background in startups, where it was common to seek employees for positions that did not yet exist, with organizations that did not yet exist and may not exist for even two years.”
Meanwhile, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) then recommended on Monday that the House Ethics Committee should further examine the allegations against Rep. Newman.
