Omar Ashmawy, the chief of the Congressional Ethics Office, has returned to duty just weeks after crashing his car into a Pennsylvania home in September and being charged with driving under the influence, but Republicans about to take control of the House in January are raising fresh concerns about his past conduct and his performance in the sensitive job.
The senior Republicans on the House Administration, Ethics, and Rules Committees have been briefed on the September 2022 DUI incident as well as a 2015 bar fight during which Ashmawy was injured but was later found to have improperly used his congressional position to pressure police to file criminal charges against his antagonists, according to internal correspondence and memos obtained by Just the News.
WELL THAT ISNT ETHICAL AT ALL AND A VIOLATION OF FED ETHICS CDOE
In the 2015 episode, an independent counsel named by the House to investigate concluded that Ashmawy “attempted to improperly exert pressure” on local police by using his official congressional emails and commenting that “people in Washington DC were following the decision of local authorities,” according to information the cochairmen of the congressional board that supervises Ashmawy sent lawmakers recently.
Ashmawy was also sued by one of the men in the fight, a former Transportation Security Administration air marshal, who accused Ashmawy of improperly trying to get him criminally charged and fired from his job. The man wasn’t charged but lost his job. Ashmawy settled the lawsuit by making a small cash payment without admitting any wrongdoing, according to letters and other memos sent to lawmakers.
Ashmawy escaped further discipline for the 2015 incident, according to one of the letters.
“Though it did not condone Mr. Ashmawy’s use of his official account in this manner, the Board did not discipline him for it,” cochairmen Michael D. Barnes and Paul Vinovich wrote the lawmakers in late October, attaching a copy of the internal investigative report on the bar fight. “Having been beaten, severely injured, hospitalized and then sued by one of his assailants, the Board concluded this lapse in judgement did not warrant further punishment and concluded the matter.”