Weldon to pay back over $23,000 in unethical donations

From the Jan 3, 2007 Washington Post: Two House Ethics Violations Reported

On a day Democrats unveiled details of a new ethics package, House leaders today announced that two Republican lawmakers had violated congressional gift rules.
..outgoing Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who lost a reelection bid in November, also violated House gift rules and will pay more than $23,000 to donors of a trip he took with several family members, the committee leaders said.

For all of us that had been questioning Weldon's ethics, in particular how he used his position to enrich his family, this is more confirmation of what we had always suspected/realized. Even if you give Weldon the benefit of the doubt on whether the gift would have applied if not related to his duties, the committee ruled that the trip was related to his duties as a congressman, despite Weldon's clearly dishonest previous assertion in Jan 2003 that the trip was not related to his duties.
It's now Jan 2007, four years later. Even after Weldon pays back the $23,000 plus, how much influence did it buy and what has been the cost to the taxpayers? If the GOP lead house ethics committee had been functioning properly, this could have been resolved sooner. Also, I suspect that if the race in the 7th hadn't drawn so much national attention to Weldon, this would have been swept under the rug. Still, better late than never.

According to the ethics committee's statement, Weldon sought guidance from the panel before taking a January 2003 trip with family members to see if the trip would comply with the House's gift rule provisions that allow members of Congress to accept "travel and other benefits resulting from outside activities that are unrelated to official duties." He told the committee that the trip was not related to his work in Congress.
The committee told him he could not rely on that provision of the gift rule.
The committee later ruled that Weldon had violated House ethics rules because the expenses-paid trip with family members was related to his duties as a congressman.
Weldon took three trips with family members in January 2003 at the expense of a company or institution, according to his financial disclosure statement for that year. He visited Moscow, Vienna, Belgrade and Saratov, Russia on these trips.
Weldon is facing an FBI probe into whether he performed favors for foreign-controlled businesses that employed his daughter, Karen Weldon. The FBI raided his daughter's offices and home in October.