William F. Smith: “My conclusion is that the penalty that has been assessed by the Ethics Committee is way too severe when you look at the…”

“My conclusion is that the penalty that has been assessed by the Ethics Committee is way too severe when you look at the actual findings of the committee and when you look at the precedent that has been established by this House. Let us look at the actual findings. There have been two here. The first finding is that the Speaker should have consulted an attorney about tax laws. The second is that he submitted two inaccurate letters to the Ethics Committee. These are real mistakes, but they should not be hanging offenses, especially when we consider that there was no finding of any law that was broken, there was no finding of any intent to mislead the Ethics Committee, and there was no finding that the Speaker received any personal financial gain. The special counsel to the Ethics Committee once described it this way. He said that the Speaker had 'run some very yellow lights.' But you do not get ticketed, or you should not, for running a very yellow light, no matter how close it is to becoming a red one. If we look at the precedents that have been established here as well, we see that there is no justification for this severe a penalty.”