Stuck On Stupid

Two former aides to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) have alleged that he repeatedly violated House ethics rules.

Deanna Maher, a former deputy chief of staff in Conyers’s Detroit office, and Sydney Rooks, a former legal counsel in the district office, provided evidence for the allegations by sharing numerous letters, memorandums and copies of e-mails, handwritten notes and expense reports with The Hill.

In letters sent separately by each woman to the House ethics committee, the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office, they allege that Conyers demanded that aides work on several local and state campaigns and forced them to baby-sit and chauffeur his children. They also charge that some aides illegally used Conyers’s congressional offices to enrich themselves.

Maher decided she could no longer work for Conyers in such an unethical environment and quit in May 2005. Rooks had left Conyers years earlier; she was a full-time staffer working in the office for him from 1997 to 1999. Before leaving, Conyers placed her on paid administrative leave for several months and stopped paying her in April 2000.

“I could not tolerate any longer being involved with continual unethical, if not criminal, practices which were accepted as ‘business as usual,’” Maher wrote in a letter to the ethics panel dated Jan. 13, 2006.

A spokesman in Conyers’s office referred questions to Stanley Brand, an attorney who regularly defends public officials charged with wrongdoing.

Brand said, “We’ve responded fully and completely over two years ago to what the ethics committee sent to us, and we’ve not heard anything since then.”