Congresswoman Maxine Waters in hot water

The House ethics committee is investigating whether Congresswoman Maxine Waters used her political connections for personal financial gain. The move comes one day after an activist watchdog group called the LA Democrat one of the most “corrupt” politicians in Washington. KPCC’s Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde reports.

Kitty Felde: Waters is accused of pulling strings to set up a meeting last year between black-owned banks and Treasury Department officials. She says she wanted to be sure those banks were included when the government offered money to bail out financial institutions in trouble. One black-owned bank - OneUnited - asked for 50 million dollars in government money. Waters and her husband owned hundreds of thousands of dollars in OneUnited stock. Treasury officials say they didn’t know that; Waters says she disclosed it in official filings. The Office on Congressional Ethics – which sifts through ethics complaints about House members - looked into the Waters case. It referred it to a House committee – and that committee has voted unanimously to continue the Waters investigation for another 45 days.