A Republican member of the MAGA wing was slapped in the face with a landmark ethics rebuke from the Senate Ethics Committee for failing to submit his financial information, violating federal law and the rules of the chamber.
Former billionaire Republican Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia became the subject of a letter of admonition from the committee this week, according to The Washington Sun. “It is the first time since the passage of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that the committee has found a senator in violation of federal law for failure to report their finances by the legal deadline,” the paper reported.
The committee was not shy about calling out the damage Justice, a prominent ally of President Donald Trump, inflicted on the body by his actions. “Your actions failed to uphold that standard, resulting in harm to the public trust and confidence in the United States Senate and a violation of federal law,” Republican Chairman James Lankford of Oklahoma and Democratic Vice Chairman Chris Coons of Delaware wrote in a letter to the senator dated Nov. 10.
Justice was first elected governor as a Democrat but changed parties onstage at a Trump rally in 2017. He was elected to the Senate in 2024 after receiving an endorsement from Trump.
By law, senators are supposed to file their financial disclosures by May 15. But Justice was granted two extensions for filing his disclosure, which moved the deadline back to Aug. 13. Even after Justice’s filing assistant acknowledged receiving six separate reminders from the committee about the deadline, he told the panel less than 30 minutes before the Aug. 13 deadline that the senator did not plan on filing on time. Justice then missed another deadline for filing his disclosure that the committee set and filed it on Sept. 8.
While the ethics committee acknowledged that Justice’s accountant and filing assistant were facing “a significant family hardship,” the lawmakers were clear that those challenges did not excuse the senator from violating transparency laws. The hardship “does not abrogate your personal responsibility as a U.S. Senator to comply with governing federal law,” Lankford and Coons wrote.
In a statement to The Washington Sun following the ethics panel’s action, Justice attributed his tardiness to his longtime accountant having to deal with his wife’s terminal illness. “Admittedly, we did not fully appreciate the significance of filing the financial disclosure late. Nevertheless, it should have been filed on time, period. It won’t happen again,” Justice wrote.
The Sun described the committee’s letter as a “public scolding,” which comes without any formal punishment. The paper reported that the ethics panel has not formally sanctioned a senator for their conduct in more than two decades.
