House ethics committee considering full scale investigation into allegations against Alaska’s Rep. Don Young

The House Ethics Committee announced on Monday that it will take another 45 days to determine whether to launch full-scale investigations into allegations against Reps. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Don Young (R-Alaska).

Reps. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), the chairman and the ranking member of the Ethics Committee, made the statement in response to requests for investigations into the two veteran lawmakers from the Office of Congressional Ethics. The Ethics Committee has up to 90 days to act an OCE recommendation by conducting its own probe or making the results of the OCE review public.

Winsome Packer, a former staffer on the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which Hastings chaired, claims that she was the victim of “unwelcome sexual advances” and “unwelcome touching” by the congressman. Packer has filed a lawsuit against Hastings asserting that he retaliated against her when she objected to his behavior.

Packer has been aided by the conservative group Judicial Watch in her lawsuit against Hastings.

It is unclear what OCE was scrutinizing in the Young case, but the cantankerous Alaska Republican was the subject of a long-running Justice Department probe until last year. DOJ looked at Young’s ties to Bill Allen, a former oil industry executive who was at the center of the federal corruption case against the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

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