Charles Rangel: “My dear friends and colleagues, I rise to the floor because the newspapers and the media have indicated that there is a…”

“My dear friends and colleagues, I rise to the floor because the newspapers and the media have indicated that there is a concern about some of the Members in this House that I retire or remove myself from this body. And I have always tried to play by the rules. And I cannot think of anybody that has encouraged me to speak here. I want to thank all of you who are concerned about me for saying that, you know, a guy's a fool to represent himself, as some of the people have said. But I have been losing a lot of sleep over these allegations, and my family and community. And some of these rules that they have is that I am restricted by confidentiality. But for years I have been saying, No comment, no comment, no comment to a lot of serious allegations because I could not comment, and I would refer them to the Ethics Committee. When the Ethics Committee finally brought out their statement of alleged violations, it was a long list of things, and somehow the chairman of the subcommittee of investigation indicated that I had received a lot of offers to settle this thing so that it would not cause embarrassment to my Democratic friends, and that I had been offered a reprimand. And a lot of people kind of felt that that sounded like a wonderful opportunity to remove this so that I could leave the Congress with some degree of dignity. Why, even some people said that the President had suggested that his life might be made easier if there was no Charlie Rangel so-called scandal.…”