Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) failed to disclose income on his disclosure forms and didn’t report 17 positions he held at various companies and organizations from 2007 through 2010, according to an Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) report released Monday.
The report was issued to the House Ethics Committee on Nov. 8 but disclosed publicly on Monday. The House Ethics Committee said in a statement that it had decided to “gather additional information necessary to complete its review.”
The Ethics Committee will have to determine whether amendments Buchanan made to his disclosure reports following questions from OCE were “filed with a presumption of good faith under a two-prong test.”
Buchanan explained several instances involving missing information by telling OCE that his “people missed it” or that the information in question was left out due to an “oversight” or a “technical discrepancy.”
Buchanan has been under an ethics cloud in recent months and is currently the subject of several ongoing investigations involving his finances and alleged violations of campaign finance law. His campaign claimed a Federal Election Commission report had exonerated him of the later allegations, but the FEC general counsel report actually said that several of his statements were not credible.
Ryan J. Reilly
Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.
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