Members of the House Administration Committee on Tuesday turned the tables on the independent agency tasked with investigating ethics complaints against members by grilling its director over alleged ethical breaches.
Omar Ashmawy, Office of Congressional Ethics staff director and chief counsel, fielded a flurry of questions from the committee’s Oversight subpanel about two drinking-related incidents from the last decade, as well as larger queries by the subcommittee’s GOP members about a perceived lack of transparency and over-politicization of the OCE.
“I would say the head of the OCE is also human and in my case it turns out I’m an alcoholic,” Ashmawy said in his testimony. He said he’d recently completed a six-month outpatient treatment program and continues to submit to urine tests that can detect the use of alcohol.
