This week, Democrats demanded President Trump be investigated for alleged sexual misconduct; Republicans demanded the special counsel on Russia be investigated for alleged conflicts of interest. Meantime, new sexual harassment probes started up recently in Congress, including against Congressmen John Conyers and Trent Franks and Senator Al Franken… before he announced his resignation. We investigated what Congress' ethics committees really do.
Meredith McGehee: People who live in glass houses don't like to throw stones. That's the truth, on the House and the Senate side.
Meredith McGehee is executive director of Issue One, a nonprofit working to drain the Washington swamp. That includes reforming how Congress investigates misconduct within its own ranks.
Sharyl: Is it accurate to say that all of the ethics bodies that oversee Congress in some way are created by or beholden to Congress?
McGehee: Absolutely. The people that sit on the ethics committees, one day they're judging whether or not their colleague has violated congressional ethics rules; the next day they're probably going on the floor trying to convince them to vote for one of their amendments. So there's a built in conflict of interest.
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