Why Stefanik’s pro-Trump ethics complaints are an embarrassing 'flop'

05 June 2024

During the 2016 presidential race, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) was highly critical of Donald Trump and had a reputation for being a conventional "pro-business Republican" along the lines of now-Sen. Mitt Romney or Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But Stefanik has since taken a far-right MAGA turn and become a strident Trump defender, and she is reportedly being considered as a running mate for the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee.

In a biting column published on June 5, MSNBC's Steve Benen examines the ethics complaints that Stefanik has been making on Trump's behalf — complaints that, Benen argues, are devoid of substance and merely designed to make Trump "happy."

"House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik is apparently a contender for her party's vice presidential nomination," Benen explains, "and with that in mind, the New York Republican is apparently trying to corner the market in baseless ethics complaints in the hopes of making Donald Trump happy. In fact, as regular readers know, Stefanik has specifically gone after a series of law enforcement officials involved in holding the former president accountable, filing official ethics complaints against two judges, a state attorney general, and special counsel Jack Smith."

Benen adds, "All of this has happened over the course of just six months, as chatter about the congresswoman pursuing national office has intensified. One of these complaints, however, has apparently already flopped."

The complaint that Benen describes as a flop — one against Justice Arthur Engoron and his law clerk, Allison Greenfield — was the focus of an article by the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery published on June 4.

According to Pagliery, Engoron and Greenfield "got the last laugh" when, on March 14, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct "chucked out Stefanik's accusation."

Benen notes, however, that although the Beast's reporting "has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News," Stefanik's office "didn't make much of an effort to deny the article's accuracy." And Benen adds that the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct probably "wasn't Stefanik's intended audience" anyway.

"Rather, this was a stunt intended to score cheap points at Mar-a-Lago," Benen argues. "If the reporting is correct and her complaint has been rejected, it doesn't much matter because it wasn't a serious ethics filing in the first place."

The MSNBC columnist and Rachel Maddow producer adds, "Trump was probably pleased to see that Stefanik made the complaint against the judge that held him accountable for systemic business fraud. The outcome was irrelevant."

Steve Benen's full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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