Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tried to cash in on President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial through a fundraising email, the North Carolina Democratic Party alleged in an ethics complaint on Thursday.
The complaint, filed to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, says Tillis violated federal law by sending an email from his campaign on January 21—in the middle of an impeachment trial in which Tillis was a juror sworn to do “impartial” justice—asking for donations to a “Presidential Protection Fund.”
The Dems say the fundraising email constituted a misuse of official resources. In addition, they say, Tillis isn’t supposed to raise money “for or because of specific official actions,” the complaint says. It asks for an investigation and “appropriate remedial action.”
That probably won’t happen, as The Charlotte Observer notes. The ethics committee has only acted on one complaint since 2010.
Tillis’s campaign brushed off the complaint in a statement Saturday.
“The North Carolina Democratic Party should be embarrassed that they are going to waste taxpayer dollars with such a frivolous complaint that will ultimately be thrown out by the Senate Ethics Committee,” Tillis spokesman Andrew Romeo told The Observer.
Tillis was steadfastly opposed to impeaching the Cheeto-in-chief, claiming in an op-ed that even if the president did try to coerce Ukraine into digging up dirt on the Bidens (he did), that still wouldn’t be an impeachable offense.
Read the full complaint below:
Ethics Complaint Tillis by Leigh Tauss on Scribd
Contact Raleigh news editor Leigh Tauss at ltauss@indyweek.com.
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