{"id":226570,"date":"2026-04-10T17:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/226570\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T17:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:43:17","slug":"house-ethics-committee-to-consider-sanctions-for-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick-on-april-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/226570\/","title":{"rendered":"House Ethics Committee to consider sanctions for Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick on April 21"},"content":{"rendered":"

The House Ethics Committee will meet April 21 to vote on sanctions for U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, potentially including expulsion.<\/p>\n

That means a meeting that could signal the end of the Miramar Democrat\u2019s congressional career will take place just as Florida state lawmakers consider a map that could make<\/a> her re-election virtually impossible.<\/p>\n

The Ethics meeting is scheduled less than a month after an adjudicating panel affirmed 25 counts<\/a> violating House rules, most in connection to allegations she siphoned millions<\/a> in disaster relief funding to her congressional campaign account.<\/p>\n

The meeting will mark the first time the 10 members of the evenly divided<\/a> Ethics Committee will discuss the allegations publicly. But eight of those members were part of the Subcommittee that sat for an hourslong trial<\/a> in the House on March 26.<\/p>\n

Once the Committee votes on the most appropriate sanctions \u2014 which could include expelling the lawmaker from Congress \u2014 a vote heads to the House floor for consideration by the entire House.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, a Sarasota Republican, has already threatened to file<\/a> an expulsion resolution if Cherfilus-McCormick does not resign.<\/p>\n

In the Ethics trial, the flow of money detailed some $14 million in state funding paid to Trinity Health Care Services, a business she helped found. Investigators say that money ended up being directed to a series of contractors run by Cherfilus-McCormick and her family members.<\/p>\n

That included $4.4 million sent to SCM Consulting, a business also run by Cherfilus-McCormick and bearing her initials in the name, per the trial findings. But hundreds of thousands were also sent to companies founded by her brother, sister and a close family friend.<\/p>\n

Each of those companies and several other accounts ultimately donated money to Cherfilus-McCormick\u2019s 2021 Special Election campaign for Congress, sometimes exceeding campaign finance limits, the trial found. Cherfilus-McCormick ultimately won the Democratic nomination in that race by just five votes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Congresswoman is also the subject of a federal criminal investigation because the state payments, part of an effort to deliver COVID vaccines in underserved communities, were actually being overpaid. In the most serious case, a missing decimal point led to a payment of more than $50,000, resulting in a $5 million check, investigators say.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cherfilus-McCormick\u2019s attorney, William Barzee, in the March Ethics trial said the money collected by the Democrat and used to self-fund her campaign was earned through a legal, but unsigned, profit-sharing agreement for the family business. And he asserted that a hearing on 27 ethical allegations threatened her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent while under criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

Notably, Republicans hold just a 217-214 majority over Democrats, which has made leadership in both parties reluctant to push members to vacate their seats over ethical concerns.<\/p>\n

The April 21 sanctions meeting will happen as the Florida Legislature meets for congressional redistricting. Gov. Ron DeSantis has urged lawmakers to approve cartography built on an assumption<\/a> racial that majority-minority districts drawn in accordance with the Voting Rights Act will be deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court soon.<\/p>\n

That could mean a dismantling of Florida\u2019s 20th Congressional District, which Cherfilus-McCormick now represents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The House Ethics Committee will meet April 21 to vote on sanctions for U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, potentially…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18011,28,30,29,8868,66997,10351,8884,56181],"class_list":{"0":"post-226570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-disaster-relief","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-greg-steube","13":"tag-house-ethics-committee","14":"tag-redistricting","15":"tag-sheila-cherfilus-mccormick","16":"tag-voting-rights-act"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}