Would it be unfair of me to write, “Now there’s a face you can trust!”? Sure it would, but I don’t care. He is exactly the kind of unethical politician that Congress has way, way too many of. He upsets me so much, I ended a sentence with a preposition.
Shortly after taking the oath of office following his election to Congress in 2022, D’Esposito hired his fiancée’s daughter to work as a “special assistant” in his district office at a salary that eventually reached $3,800 a month. Then D’Esposito hired a woman with whom he was having an affair. Devin Faas collected $2,000 a month for a part-time job in the same district office as his fiancée’s daughter. (Uh, this is not the smartest way to cheat on your beloved.) When D’Esposito’s fiancée discovered the affair with Faas in July of 2023, she broke up with him, and both of the dubious hires had to find other employment.
Apparently the lovebirds are back together again. That’s nice.
She’s an idiot.
The New York Times writes that his employment of the two women could expose D’Esposito to discipline in the House of Representatives. “Could”???? Bill Clinton must be lurking. The House code of conduct prohibits members of Congress from employing spouses or relatives, including stepchildren, but it depends on what the meaning of “relatives is.” Is the daughter of a serious girlfriend (D’Esposito has never married) like a stepdaughter? Congressional ethics experts told the Times that D’Esposito may have breached the requirement that members of Congress “adhere to the spirit and the letter of the rules.”
This ethics experts says that there is no doubt about it. There are technicalities in law, but not in ethics. He abused his position and misused taxpayers funds for his personal benefit.
Another ethics prohibition explicitly states that lawmakers “may not engage in a sexual relationship with any employee of the House who works under the supervision of the member.” That’s a #MeToo rule, but was it meant to apply to an employee the House member was already boinking before she was hired? Probably not—but that hire was like Fani Willis hiring David Wade. It’s unethical: don’t parse the rules with me. The House may not be able to discipline him, but voters should. Marty McFly wants to weigh in…
Rep. D’Esposito is running for re-election in a district he barely won in 2022, and that has mostly Democratic voters. With the GOP House majority hanging by a thread, one might think he would have tried to be beyond reproach in his personal matters. That’s what a responsible public servant would do.
Nope.
Is this really the best Republicans can find?
Ethics Alarms 
Having just crossed the 70-Rotations-Around-the-Sun threshold, and as one who has spent the last 30+ years of his career working with news media (and training others to do so), I’m reasonably convinced that we’re all pretty much fucked. These days, I merely hope to shuffle off this mortal coil before we live the penultimate scene of Idiocracy.
Hint, for younger participants – penultimate is the scene that happens BEFORE the final scene.
I personally think that the problem was created by the law of unintended consequences, two of the most important ingredients being:
1) the adoption of the primary system, in which only the most highly-motivated voters show up, and thus select highly polarizing candidates, and
2) a news media that understood that news isn’t free, but assumed that they’d save bundles on ink, paper and delivery costs simply by moving display ads to the Web. Marketers – and I was one at the time – realized within six months that it didn’t work that way. Yet the news media persisted in this model for years, and didn’t anticipate the impact of social media until it was too late. This ensured that local media would get smoked. As a result, local informed opinion gave way to the most hyper-partisan silos on social media.
I really hope that the genius of the Constitution and the ideal of a representative republic will allow the pendulum to swing back. But I’m not optimistic. So although I plan to live well until I don’t, I’m pretty much banking on not being around to see it. And this is the first time I’ve ever felt that way.
AIM
While I am in general agreement with your lament, I don’t believe our primary system is a cause. Motivated voters emerge in the competition for government provided goods and services. Those who want the most vote for the candidates that promise the most and those who want little and see the promises as just a legalized way to rob them of their wealth also vote. The system is not the problem, greed, avarice and laziness of a growing sector of the population is.
The reason for that too many who just want to go about life with limited government don’t want to expend the energy to learn the issues and vote with their intellect.
I laugh when I hear about greedy millionaires and billionaires because the only greedy people are those who want what others have without having to do the work to create the value that other seek.
Tough break for Faas. She could have been on the Kamala Harris career track.
I blame the Republican leadership. The RNC defends incumbents with the fervor of rabid beavers. They need to take a hands off ‘we leave it to the voters to decide’ approach to Republican primaries unless the person has a BUNCH of stances that oppose official Republican positions (a devil-worshiping, pro-abortion, pro-Hamas, owned by China, illegal immigrant, for example). In Texas, they brought in Mitch McConnell to promote a House member who was sanctioned several times by the RNC for his votes. The guy looked like he would lose the primary, but they pulled out all the stops to get him endorsements and money so he could be a YouTuber by less than 500 votes. This guy should have been primaried hard and the RNC should have been HAPPY to get a better candidate. Instead, they panicked and did everything possible to keep a terrible candidate.
Morons.