Leader of investigation accused of trying to protect his party members

WASHINGTON — The California congressman leading the investigation into whether members of Congress and other government officials received sweetheart home loans from Countrywide Financial Corp. has been accused of trying to protect Republican lawmakers caught up in the probe.
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he hoped to get answers to “outstanding public-interest questions” when he issued a subpoena for records about Countrywide’s VIP discount program last year.
“The American people have a right to know the totality of who participated in the Countrywide’s VIP program and what they did in return for access to it,” Issa, R-Vista, said at the time.
But Issa’s committee has declined to publicly reveal the names of three House members whom the subpoenaed records indicate received the discounted loans. Instead, Issa has forwarded the lawmakers’ names to the House ethics committee for review, a practice he previously had condemned.
The House ethics panel operates in private, and the names became public only after they were leaked to the news media and confirmed by the lawmakers themselves. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, reportedly received the discounted loans.
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the oversight committee’s top Democrat, suggested in a letter to Issa last week that he had changed course because the three members in question are Republicans. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., got a discounted loan, but his ties to the program were made public in 2009.
Issa’s spokesman, Frederick Hill, called Cummings’ accusations “a distortion of the facts.”
“The point that Congressman Issa has consistently made is that it is not the purpose of the oversight committee’s investigation to make judgments about members of Congress, whether or not they acted appropriately,” Hill said. “That task basically goes to the ethics  committee.
“The purpose of the (oversight) committee’s investigation is to basically look at what happened on a factual basis within the Countrywide VIP program.”
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