A House Ethics adjudicatory subcommittee found Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., guilty of nearly all violations outlined against her, bringing the 47-year-old congresswoman one significant step closer to expulsion from Congress. The eight-member panel, chaired by Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., announced its decision in a written statement Friday morning after a rare public hearing that stretched past midnight the night before.
The subcommittee found that Counts 1 through 15 and 17 through 26 of the statement of alleged violations had been proven. That's 25 out of 26 counts. The charges ranged from using ineligible funds to finance her campaign to repeatedly filing false financial disclosure forms and seeking "special favors" with recipients of earmark funding requests.
Cherfilus-McCormick, who first won election to Congress in 2021, is also facing a separate federal criminal indictment. She was indicted by a Miami grand jury for allegedly stealing $5 million in FEMA funds on Nov. 18, 2025, according to the Department of Justice. If convicted, she faces up to 53 years in prison. Her federal criminal trial is expected this summer.
Thursday's proceedings were the first public ethics hearing since 2010, and they lasted more than six hours. What emerged wasn't just a portrait of alleged corruption. It was a case study in obstruction.
Cherfilus-McCormick has shifted between four different attorneys while largely refusing to cooperate with the bipartisan panel. Her new attorney, William Barzee, repeatedly claimed violations of her due process rights while maintaining her innocence. He also sought to use the fact of his recent hiring to delay the committee's proceedings until June, as Fox News reports.
The eight-member panel promptly denied that request in a closed-door session.
Rep. Michael Guest was not inclined to let the due process argument stand unchallenged. In a combative exchange with Barzee, Guest laid out exactly what the committee had been dealing with:
"For two years we've tried to get documents from your client. Not only have we requested documents, but we have subpoenaed those documents. Those documents were not provided for two years."
Two years of requests. Two years of subpoenas. Two years of silence. And then an attorney shows up to argue the process was unfair.
Guest continued:
"For you to sit here and make the claim that we, the committee, is trying to trample upon the rights of your client. I take offense to that."
One of the more revealing moments came when Barzee attempted to explain the alleged movement of millions of dollars in disaster relief funds. He claimed that an undated chart was evidence of a "profit-sharing agreement" showing Cherfilus-McCormick's legal title to the money. He further argued that because she is of Haitian descent, it was not atypical to have a "handshake agreement" to divvy up millions of dollars between her and her family instead of a formal legal document.
Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, who practiced business transaction law before coming to Congress, wasn't buying it:
"I did a lot of business transaction law for a number of years before I came to Congress. I drafted a lot of profit-sharing agreements. Never saw one that was just a chart that was unsigned."
An unsigned chart and a cultural appeal. That was the defense offered for the alleged misuse of more than $5 million in disaster relief funds, money that exists because Americans expect it to reach people whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed.
This wasn't a partisan pile-on. Rep. Mark Desaulnier, D-Calif., set the tone at the start of the hearing Thursday:
"The allegations before us are extremely serious. They not only concern an individual member's conduct, they also implicate the public's confidence in the House's integrity as an institution."
He's right, and it's worth noting how rare it is for a Democrat to publicly acknowledge that a member of their own party threatens institutional credibility. The bipartisan nature of this proceeding makes the defense team's claims of procedural unfairness even harder to sustain. This wasn't a Republican hit job. Both sides looked at the evidence, looked at the obstruction, and arrived at the same conclusion.
The panel will meet after the Easter recess to determine its recommended punishment, which could be as severe as expulsion. Meanwhile, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., has vowed to move forward with his resolution that would expel Cherfilus-McCormick regardless of the committee's outcome. Under House rules, two-thirds of lawmakers have to agree to expel a member.
That's a high bar. But consider what's already established:
Cherfilus-McCormick has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. She is entitled to that plea and to her day in court. But the ethics process is separate from the criminal one, and the ethics process just delivered its verdict on the facts it had. Twenty-five counts. Found proven.
Americans who lost everything in disasters trusted that FEMA funds would reach them. Congress has an obligation to show that trust wasn't misplaced, or at least that it won't tolerate the people who violated it sitting among them while they legislate.
The hearing ended past midnight. The facts didn't need the extra hours. The obstruction did.
