Rep. Reyes not under investigation, House panel says

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 20, 2009 2:53 PM



The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct has said it is not investigating Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who was the subject of a complaint last year involving contact between his office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a brief Nov. 5 letter, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the Standards Committee chairman, and Rep. Jo Bonner (Ala.), the panel's top Republican, told Reyes that the committee does not "confirm or elaborate on media reports regarding matters that may or may not be under consideration."

"However, in this case, the Committee can confirm that these allegations are not being investigated by the Committee," the letter said.

The allegations related to an incident in June 2008. A Reyes aide called an ICE official about the kidnapping of a Mexican woman. ICE officials then arranged meetings with Chihuahua state police, briefed FBI and other ICE officials in Mexico City, coordinated technical support, set up a command post and interviewed people in the United States. Three days later, the woman's family paid $32,000 in ransom, and she was released.

After details about the episode became public, border policy critics and a nonprofit group in Washington complained that Reyes may have behaved inappropriately.

A document prepared in July by the House panel, better known as the ethics committee, showed that committee staff members were reviewing the case. That document became public last month.

Reyes spokesman Vincent Perez has said the complaints grew out of misinformation about the call. He said that "it got very politically motivated" and that there was no substance to the complaint.

"The Committee's letter confirms what we have known along -- this was a frivolous complaint without merit," Perez said in a statement Friday.
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