GOP Scrambles to Limit Damage to Gingrich

WASHINGTON — House Republicans, fearful that new disclosures and nationally televised hearings could escalate the Newt Gingrich ethics case into a partisan debacle, on Friday intensified their efforts to shore up Gingrich’s speakership and settle the case as quickly as possible.

Republican leaders spent much of the day trying to control political damage from the publication of transcripts of a GOP strategy session on how to handle the Gingrich case.

At the same time, they played political hardball with Democrats seeking to expand public hearings scheduled for next week, when the matter will be discussed for the first time before a national television audience.

‘Unfortunately it’s not over,” said House GOP Conference Chairman John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “I don’t think anybody has any illusion. Next week could become an ugly public spectacle.”

Whatever next week may bring, the GOP’s principal objective at this point is to keep the case from dragging past the Jan. 21 deadline originally set for ending it.

“We’ve decided, on our side, that it’s going to be over on the 21st of January,” declared Rich Galen, a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman who is fielding queries from lawmakers and the press about the case. “We want to have the committee do its work, but if the Democrats choose not to let this happen, we have to put an end to it.”

James M. Cole, the committee’s special counsel, and the four members of its investigative subcommittee have asked for more time for the panel to complete the final stage of the case: hearings on what punishment to impose on Gingrich and a decision on what to recommend to the House. Democrats are portraying the Republicans’ latest moves--including changes in the schedule for handling the matter--as a frantic damage-control effort.

“There is clearly an orchestrated effort at all levels of Republican leadership to get less information to the public about this,” said a House Democratic leadership aide.

Both sides are scrambling for position in the wake of Tuesday’s House vote reelecting Gingrich as speaker. The vote was a cliffhanger because many Republicans had qualms about voting for Gingrich before they knew the outcome of the ethics investigation.

GOP leaders expended enormous political capital in the process and won support from many members by offering assurances that no more shoes would drop in the ethics case.

“We are relying on the good faith of what people are telling us that this is it; there aren’t going to be any other revelations,” said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.). “Members were pushed to the very limit on this.”

Against that backdrop, Republican leaders have been trying to stamp out any signs that the Gingrich case might escalate.

On Wednesday, for example, Gingrich’s staff tried aggressively to block publication of a Los Angeles Times story reporting that the FBI had been called in to investigate a dispute between Gingrich and a former volunteer.

On Friday, Republicans responded quickly to published reports about the GOP strategy session--based on a tape recording by someone using a police scanner to monitor a conference phone call. They called for a Justice Department investigation of possible violations of federal wiretap law.

The New York Times, which published a partial transcript of the GOP conference call, said that it obtained the tape recording from a Democratic congressman who said it had been made by people in Florida unsympathetic to Gingrich.

Gingrich aides confirmed that the conversation took place the morning of Dec. 21, just hours before Ethics Committee members announced the results of their investigation into a college course Gingrich taught several years ago with financial support from a nonprofit foundation.

Participants in the conference call included Gingrich, other Republican leaders, and one of his lawyers: former Rep. Ed Bethune. The call appeared to be a strategy session aimed at political damage control, in which the participants discussed the contents of a statement to be issued by GOP leaders following the subcommittee announcement.

The ethics panel found--and Gingrich admitted--that he had violated House rules by giving false information to the committee about the course’s relationship to his political activities and by failing to take adequate steps to ensure that he complied with federal laws barring the use of tax-exempt funds for partisan purposes.

As part of a deal worked out with the investigative subcommittee and Cole, Gingrich agreed not to talk publicly about the case nor to orchestrate others’ attacks on the subcommittee’s case against him.

Democrats said that the transcript shows Gingrich doing just that.

During the conversation, Bethune warned that the agreement with Cole prohibited any kind of “orchestration attempt by Newt Gingrich.” But Gingrich himself participated in the group’s discussion of what kind of statement would be issued.

One Democratic member of the Ethics Committee called the Gingrich conversation “very incriminating.”

“The speaker was in a call he shouldn’t have been in on,” the Democrat said.

But Gingrich aides insisted that the conversation did not violate Gingrich’s agreement not to orchestrate an attack on the subcommittee or its work.

Other Republicans focused less on the substance of the conversation than on the legality of the way it was obtained.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) wrote to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno asking for a criminal investigation to determine who made the recording and which Democratic congressman leaked it. Both parties, he said, violated federal laws restricting wiretaps and the disclosure of information unlawfully obtained through wiretaps.

“The Democrats are so intent on destroying the speaker, some are willing to violate federal law in order to do it,” said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas). “The question is not whether the Democrats violated federal law, but which one did it.”

Because the recording reportedly was made in Florida, Republican leaders believe it was picked up from the cellular phone being used by Boehner, who was driving through north Florida at the time.

The GOP battle to keep the Gingrich case from dragging past Jan. 21 has consumed the Ethics Committee, which has found itself so divided over procedural questions that some lawmakers wonder how it will ever be able to reach substantive agreement on the case.

“This committee has become so polarized, there are so many bombs being thrown, that the committee decision is going to come back split between Democrats and Republicans,” said a former member of the panel.

On Thursday, Committee Chairwoman Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.) abruptly postponed the televised public hearings from Monday until next Thursday. She said that the change was designed to allow Cole to write his report before the hearing, responding to bitter Democratic complaints that, under her previous schedule, Cole’s report would not be available until long after the House’s Jan. 21 vote on punishing Gingrich.

The move trumped Democrats, because the new schedule would replace a plan that called for a full week of televised hearings that would have given the case the broad public exposure many Democrats had sought. Under the revised schedule, the televised hearings may be limited to one day.

Democrats urged Johnson to reschedule the disciplinary hearings for Monday morning, saying that the House parliamentarian had ruled that she did not have the power to alter the schedule without agreement by the full committee.

Johnson rejected the request, saying that Democrats were engaged in an “orchestrated partisan agenda.”