Video: Justifying Ethics investigations

>>> are black lawmakers being unfairly targeted for ittics violations in congress? representative cleaver is calling for people to temporary temporarily step aside. he writes, quote, i write to express my deep and abiding concern with the protracted length, abnormal number , motive, and fairness of pending matters. manu, good afternoon to you. five black lawmakers currently under scrutiny in some shape or form by the ethics committee . first of all, is this an unusual number ?

>> there are at least fierchlt remember the ethics committee is a very secretive committee. there could be even more. you know, cleaver, there are questions about whether this is racially motivated or not and a lot of these members are senior members of congress , people who have been on rounds for a long time, people who have been targeted over the years, and when you're that senior and that powerful, sometimes like -- you get hit with some ethics kplanlts. the question is whether or not it's coincidence and cleaver thinks it may not be.

>> the congressman cytoed the case of congresswoman maxine waters who's been under investigation for the better part of three years. are there no rules on things like this and how long they could drag on?

>> they could drag on for years. that's part of the concern waters has. it's very critical for her. she's in line to become the top democrat on the financial services committee , a very powerful committee if the democrats win control of the house, she would become chair of the committee. if this investigation were to continue to drag on, it would be difficult for her to ascend to that spot potentially. her critics could use that against her. she think she's been allegedly targeted. back in 2008 she intervened on bank in which her husband served on the board and owned stock. she said she didn't do anything wrong and this investigation has been completely mishandled and there's an outside council investigating this investigation right now as well. so, look, these can drag on for a while and these are very uncomfortable for members of congress because they get dragged through the headlines.

>> one last thing. specifically in the waters investigation to make the aft s affidavits public, would transparencies be a good thing or wow it open a whole new can of worms and undermine the process.

>> the concern is it could undermine the process. all the times there are little pieces of information floating in the press or someone says something about an investigation, suddenly it could blow up into a major story, even if there's nothing there. that's the concern that lawmakers have. at the same time, folks want to know are members of congress being looked at for potentially doing something unethical. it's a fine line they have to balance.

>> manu raju, thank you. i want to apologize. we put up a graphic of five. we mistakenly put up a picture of jesse jackson senior -- junior, we apologize for that.

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