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Politics|Florida Democrat Resigns From Congress Just Before Panel Weighs Expelling Her
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/us/politics/cherfilus-mccormick-florida.html
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Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick stands accused of stealing $5 million in federal funds. She said she would step down minutes before an ethics panel was to vote on whether to recommend expelling her.
April 21, 2026Updated 5:24 p.m. ET
Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the Florida Democrat charged with embezzling $5 million in federal disaster aid and using it for her campaign, announced her resignation from Congress on Tuesday, just minutes before the House Ethics Committee had been set to vote on whether to recommend that the House expel her.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, was indicted in November on charges of stealing Federal Emergency Management Agency money and funneling some of it to her 2021 congressional campaign. The ethics panel had been investigating the matter for more than two years, reviewing tens of thousands of documents related to accusations that the Republican chairman, Representative Michael Guest of Mississippi, described on Tuesday as “extremely serious and extremely complicated.”
The committee, which last month found Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 violations including campaign finance infractions and false financial disclosures, had been preparing to vote on whether to recommend a sentence of expulsion to the full House. Such a penalty, which requires a two-thirds majority vote to oust a colleague, is an extremely rare occurrence that has happened only six times in the history of the chamber.
Instead, Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick pre-empted the action, issuing a fiery statement that said she was resigning, about 20 minutes before the panel had been set to meet. When the committee convened, her brief official resignation letter was read into the record and the session was abruptly adjourned because the committee no longer had jurisdiction.
“I will not stand by and pretend that this has been anything other than a witch hunt,” she wrote in a separate statement she posted online.
Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, whose case is expected to go to trial next year, has denied wrongdoing. If convicted, she could face up to 53 years in prison.
