U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt to repay $500,000 to Turkish Coalition of America

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. Representative Jean Schmidt, Republican of Ohio, has been ordered by the House Ethics Committee to repay a Turkish-American group $500,000 for legal services it improperly paid for to help her pursue a defamation lawsuit and other legal proceedings against a Democratic opponent in the 2008 election.

The action by the House committee, disclosed Friday, August 5, did not come with a formal punishment, because ethics investigators concluded that Ms. Schmidt had been misled by her own lawyers from the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund about who was paying the legal bills.

Ms. Schmidt was ordered to amend her annual personal financial disclosure reports to acknowledge the gift from the Turkish Coalition of America, which actually paid the bills, and then reimburse the lawyers, New York Times reported.

The case involving Ms. Schmidt has its origins in the move in 2007 by Armenian-Americans to get the House to pass the American Genocide resolution.

Ms. Schmidt sided with the Turkish-American groups.

One of her opponents in the 2008 race, who lost the Democratic nomination, accused her of taking “blood money” in the form of campaign contributions in return for her opposition to the House resolution. Ms. Schmidt ended up filing a $6.8 million defamation lawsuit, and the legal bills were improperly paid by the Turkish Coalition, the ethics committee concluded. There were also other legal challenges to her election, which were handled by lawyers paid by the coalition.