The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency in government and civic arenas. We achieve this mission by hanging a lantern over public officials who put their own interests over the interests of the public good. We write today to request that the Office of Congressional Ethics immediately investigate Representative Alan Grayson’s reported obvious breach of House Ethics Rules. According to a recent report in Politico, Representative Grayson manages multiple “hedge funds that use his name in their title, a practice prohibited by congressional ethics rules.” Matt Dixon, Alan Grayson Hedge Funds Skirt Ethics Rule, Politico, June 30, 2015. This is not simply a technical violation, but rather is a violation that implicates fundamental goals of the ethics rules—to ensure that Members fulfill the public trust inherent in the office by prohibiting Members from profiting by virtue of their office and being improperly influenced.
