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House Ethics Committee members said Friday that Florida Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick committed 25 ethics violations, concluding a case that could strengthen Republican efforts to expel her from Congress. The panel said it would recommend a punishment in the coming weeks after a hearing that ran for about seven hours and continued into early Friday morning.
The ruling centers on allegations that Cherfilus-McCormick received millions of dollars from her family’s health care business after Florida overpaid roughly $5 million in disaster relief funds. Investigators alleged that she used that money to finance her 2022 campaign through a network of businesses and family members, and the committee said it found violations tied to those findings.
According to the committee, investigators had laid out 27 violations of House ethics standards and rules in a 242-page report. The panel found Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of all but two of the proposed violations, including findings related to breaking campaign finance laws, as described in the committee’s report.
The committee declined to find her guilty on one allegation related to political help from an organization run by an adviser and her husband, which the committee did not accept as charged in the panel’s final findings. The committee also did not find her guilty of refusing to cooperate with the ethics investigation.
Cherfilus-McCormick did not testify during the Thursday ethics hearing, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her attorney, William Barzee, criticized the process as the first open proceeding in nearly 15 years, and he argued lawmakers should have allowed a thorough ethics trial in which he could present witnesses and evidence to rebut the House investigators’ conclusions.
In his remarks, Barzee also faulted the panel’s evidentiary basis, saying it was driven primarily by bank records. He accused the committee of giving further momentum to efforts to “throw a woman out of Congress who was duly elected by her constituents” based on those records, according to the account of the hearing.
Cherfilus-McCormick denied wrongdoing in a statement and said she was looking forward to proving her innocence. She said, “Until then, my focus remains where it belongs: showing up for the great people of Florida’s 20th District who sent me to Washington to fight for them.”
The ethics case overlaps with federal criminal charges that Cherfilus-McCormick faces for allegedly stealing $5 million in COVID-19 disaster relief funds and using those funds to purchase items including a 3-carat yellow diamond ring. The federal case also includes charges against her brother, a former chief of staff, and her accountant; Cherfilus-McCormick has pleaded not guilty, and her attorney indicated during the hearing that the trial is expected to begin in coming months.
The House Ethics Committee said it would meet after Congress returns from a two-week break in April to consider what punishment to recommend for a vote in the House. Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida told reporters Thursday that once the committee makes its determination, he would “move on the floor to expel.”
Democratic leaders declined to condemn Cherfilus-McCormick, saying they wanted to see the ethics process play out. The outcome also has potential political stakes for Democrats because the House’s narrow margins mean every seat can affect votes, and expelling a member could give Republicans more room to maneuver legislation in the chamber.
A couple of members of the Congressional Black Caucus attended the start of the ethics hearing Thursday in what appeared to be support for Cherfilus-McCormick. On Friday morning, Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a moderate who has sometimes broken with her party, posted on social media that “since she was found guilty, she should resign or be removed.”
The last member expelled from Congress was Republican Rep. George Santos of New York in 2023. At the time, he argued the House would be “haunted” by the precedent of expelling a member before a criminal trial played out, and House Speaker Mike Johnson voted against expulsion, citing the same concern; expelling a member still requires a two-thirds majority in the 435-member House.