WASHINGTON — Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) was forced to appear Thursday at a rare ethics “trial” on whether she violated House rules by allegedly stealing as much as $5 million in federal funding to finance her political aspirations.
Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, allegedly took the millions of dollars after the funds were mistakenly deposited in a bank account of a health care company owned by her family and contracted with the government to help with COVID-19 vaccinations.
An investigative panel of the House Ethics Committee debated the ethical violations stemming from her receipt of the funds and channeling a large portion of them into a successful 2022 congressional run — but did not deliver a final ruling.
“When a decision has been reached, we will announce it through a public statement released by the committee,” Chairman Michael Guest (R-Miss.) said at the close of the hearing.
The panel was evenly split, with four Republicans and four Democrats, and posed tough questions to Cherfilus-McCormick and her defense attorney William Balzee.
If found “guilty,” the Ethics Committee may in the future vote to recommend the full House censure the congresswoman or expel her from office.
A more than two-year probe by the committee — which compiled tens of thousands of pages of supporting materials and fired off multiple subpoenas — found “substantial reason to believe” the congresswoman broke House rules.
The last House lawmaker to sit for a public ethics hearing was the late New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel — who dramatically got up and left the room in the middle of the proceedings because he lacked legal representation.
Rangel had similarly pleaded for his trial to be postponed and walked out when his request was denied by the House panel.
The allegations against Cherfilus-McCormick also led to a federal criminal indictment in November 2025, where prosecutors claimed she used some of the funds to splurge on a 3.14-carat yellow diamond ring.
She’s been charged on 15 counts related to stealing federal funds, money laundering and taking straw donor contributions, among others, and faces up to 53 years in prison upon conviction.
Ethics Committee members deliberated their own motion alleging 27 counts against Cherfilus-McCormick of campaign finance, financial disclosure and other violations for most of Thursday’s hearing.
Before that, her attorney sought to postpone consideration of those violations, citing her criminal trial next month.
The congresswoman never spoke during the more than six-hour hearing, but her defense lawyer disputed all allegations, claiming that Cherfilus-McCormick received the money as part of a prior-existing, profit-sharing agreement with a company that employed her and other family members, Trinity Health Care Solutions.
From 2020 to 2021, her salary from Trinity remained at $86,000 but her overall income spiked to more than $6 million — at least $5.7 million came from Trinity to a consulting firm that she “wholly owned” between March of that year and October 2022, when it was voluntarily dissolved, a House ethics report found in January.
“This is a family business,” Barzee noted at one point in the hearing, claiming that there was a lack of documentation for financials at the health care company because the business was conducted “around the kitchen table.”
Elsewhere, the lawyer also claimed that Cherfilus-McCormick, as a Haitian American, would be familiar with business arrangements being made “orally” or by “a handshake.”
Barzee also claimed that tens of thousands of Floridians were vaccinated as a result of her family’s for-profit health care business.
But millions of dollars of that funding came from the government — which paid Trinity to help register people for COVID jabs — and is alleged to have eventually found its way into Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional campaign’s coffers.
The motion debated Thursday stated she “won her first successful election to the House after running on an ‘self-bought, unbossed’ platform that portrayed herself as self-financing her campaign.”
Cherfilus-McCormick had twice failed in her 2018 and 2020 bids for Congress — but succeeded in winning the special election for Florida’s 20th Congressional District in January 2022 and again in November that year.
“She’s absolutely innocent. She’s looking forward to being in criminal court in order to prove her innocence, which I’m confident she’s going to be able to do,” Barzee said. “But she’s in between a rock and a hard place right now.”
“What I’m saying is the actions of this committee will result in a loss of her constitutional rights,” he exclaimed.
“She would be found in violation of the rules of the House, not the law. There is a very real distinction there. … I hope you would submit that,” responded Rep. Bradd Knott (R-NC) at one point.
“I agree,” replied Barzee, before adding: “Do you think the press is going to follow your admonition and say that she was in violation of a rule of the House? Or do you think the press is going to say, congresswoman, guilty.”
“Candidly,” Knott returned fire, “that’s the job of the defense counsel to ensure that standards met.”
Republicans and Democrats on the House ethics panel, however, said she repeatedly declined to cooperate with investigators, who took the extraordinary step of issuing a subpoena as part of their inquiry.
“For two years, we tried to get documents from your client,” Guest said. “For two years, we tried to get a statement from your client.”
Cherfilus-McCormick had also gone through multiple defense lawyers before being hauled in.
“The American people deserve for their institutions to uphold ethical standards, and the American people are entitled to demand accountability of all of us … if their elected representatives are without integrity,” noted Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the ethics panel, in opening remarks.
“It is in this service of these foundational principles that we convene today at a time when public confidence in our institution is so low.”
