Rob Andrews (D, New Jersey-01) cuts and runs. While still under an House Ethics investigation.

Gee.  I wonder why.

Rep. Robert E. Andrews, D-N.J., will resign from Congress this month to take a job with a Philadelphia Law Firm, according to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Andrews, a Pelosi ally, is scheduled to host an 11:30 a.m. press conference in his southern New Jersey district, the newspaper also reported.

The 12-term Democrat is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which was reportedly questioning whether the congressman used funds from his re-election campaign to pay for a trip to Scotland for his family.

More on that:

The [Office of Congressional Ethics] reported [sic] released in August of last year focused on a trip that Andrews took with his wife and two daughters to attend a wedding in Edinburgh, Scotland, followed by a visit to London. The wedding was for an individual whom Andrews met while working on a presidential campaign in 2003. Though at the time of the wedding the two had not interacted professionally in any capacity for several years, the Andrews for Congress or the Committee to Strengthen America campaign accounts either directly paid for or were later used to reimburse the cost of four business class tickets that totaled about $16,000, a hotel bill of more than $7,000 at the five-star luxury resort The Balmoral, nearly $500 for a wedding gift and more than $2,500 in “petty cash” for various expenses in the United Kingdom.

Andrews told the OCE that he believed the trip to be a legitimate campaign expense because the individual getting married was someone he “tried to cultivate” a relationship with because they might work together professionally in the future. His family repaid the two campaign accounts for the expenses after the trip was disclosed in media reports.

Do tell.

Moving along… Rep. Andrews is actually quietly a fairly big deal on Capitol Hill: he is the co-Chair of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee (Policy). That’s the group that determines which Democrats go on which committees, and I am going to assume that my readers don’t need to have it explained how much power can be involved in that. Suffice it to say that this is someone House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi trusts.  And now he’s cutting and running.

Do, do tell.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: NJ-01 is double-digit Democratic, but then the real story here is the continuing brain (to be nice) drain from the House Democratic leadership.