How does Congress investigate its own members for ethics complaints?

The Constitution lets each chamber of Congress "punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."¹ For most of their history neither chamber had a standing body to investigate members. The Senate created a Select Committee on Standards and Conduct in 1964 and replaced it with the Select Committee on Ethics in 1977.² The House created its Committee on Standards of Official Conduct in 1967, renamed the Committee on Ethics in 2011.³

The committees investigate, and each can issue a lesser rebuke on its own: the House committee can send a letter of reproval, and the Senate committee can order a reprimand or restitution by a unanimous vote of its six members.⁴⁵ Heavier punishments, such as expulsion and censure, take a vote of the full chamber.¹⁶ In the House, only the Ethics Committee may recommend discipline of members and staff to the House. Neither the committee nor the House's independent Office of Congressional Conduct has jurisdiction over former members, so a review ends when a member leaves office.³

The House Committee on Ethics has 10 members, five from each party, and a nonpartisan staff. Besides investigating alleged violations of House rules and related laws by members, officers and employees, it gives ethics advice and training and reviews financial disclosure statements.⁷ It accepts information about possible misconduct from the public through an online form, and it says confidentiality rules generally keep it from disclosing what it decides about any particular submission.⁸

A formal complaint is different. Under the committee's rules, a House member may file one directly; a complaint from anyone else may be sent only if a member certifies in writing that it is submitted in good faith and warrants the committee's review. A complaint must be sworn, must state specific facts and "shall not contain innuendo, speculative assertions, or conclusory statements." The committee will not accept a complaint filed within 60 days before an election in which the subject is a candidate, and it generally does not consider conduct from before the third previous Congress.⁴

Once a complaint is accepted, the chair and ranking member have set periods to recommend dismissing it or resolving it with a letter to the member, to establish an investigative subcommittee, or to ask for more time. A subcommittee can adopt a Statement of Alleged Violation, the committee's formal charging document.⁴

The House also has an independent screening office. The House created the Office of Congressional Ethics in March 2008, it opened in January 2009, and the House renamed it the Office of Congressional Conduct in January 2025. Its board has six members and at least two alternates, half appointed by the Speaker and half by the minority leader; sitting House members, federal employees and lobbyists cannot serve. Anyone may send it information, but only the board can start a review, and its jurisdiction covers only the House.³

A preliminary review needs a "reasonable basis" to believe the allegation and the written agreement of two board members, one appointed by each party's leader. It must finish within 30 calendar days or 5 legislative days, whichever is later. A second-phase review takes a finding of probable cause and the votes of at least three board members, and it has 45 calendar days or 5 legislative days, with a possible 14-day extension. The office then sends the Ethics Committee a report recommending dismissal or further review, or noting a tie, with findings but no conclusions about guilt. The office cannot issue subpoenas; the task force that designed it decided against that power, citing concerns including delay.³

The Ethics Committee generally must make the office's report public within 45 days, or after one more 45-day period if it extends the matter, though it need not publish a recommendation to dismiss that it follows.⁴ From 2009 through 2024, the board sent the committee 111 referrals recommending further review and 56 recommending dismissal, according to the Congressional Research Service's tally of the office's quarterly reports.³

In January 2026, for example, the committee published the office's report on Rep. Mike Collins.⁹ The board found substantial reason to believe that Collins retained an employee, paid as an intern, who did not perform duties commensurate with her compensation. It made related findings that he used congressional resources for unauthorized purposes and dispensed special favors by keeping on an employee with whom his chief of staff had a personal relationship. It recommended that the committee subpoena Collins, his chief of staff, the intern and three other current or former staff members.¹⁰ The committee said it would review the matter further and that doing so did not itself mean a violation had occurred.⁹

The Senate Select Committee on Ethics has six members, three from each party, and a nonpartisan staff.¹¹ Unlike the House committee, which needs a member's certification before it takes a formal complaint from outside the House, the Senate committee lets any person report a sworn complaint or other allegation, and its sources can include anonymous complaints and news reports.⁵

The committee first conducts a preliminary inquiry into whether there is "substantial credible evidence" of a violation. It can then dismiss the matter, settle an inadvertent, technical or minor violation with a public or private letter of admonition, which does not count as discipline, or open an adjudicatory review. An adjudicatory review needs the votes of at least four of the six members. It can end in a report and recommendation to the full Senate or, for misconduct warranting less serious discipline, in a reprimand or order of restitution that the committee imposes itself by a unanimous vote.⁵

The House ranks its punishments, from most to least severe, as expulsion, censure and reprimand.¹² Expulsion takes a two-thirds vote.¹ The House has expelled six members: three in 1861 for supporting the Confederacy, Michael Myers in 1980 and James Traficant in 2002 after criminal convictions, and George Santos on December 1, 2023, by a vote of 311 to 114, while he faced a 23-count federal indictment.¹²

Censure is adopted by majority vote, and the censured member stands in the well of the House while the resolution is read aloud. The House has censured six members since 2021, most recently Rep. Chuck Edwards on September 1, 2026, by 413 to 2. The House report behind that censure found that he had "violated the House Code of Official Conduct by failing to adhere to the spirit of rules prohibiting sexual harassment of and unwanted advances to House staffers." A reprimand is a milder rebuke; the last was David Schweikert's in 2020.¹²

The Senate has expelled 15 members, 14 of them during the Civil War for supporting the Confederacy.¹³ It has censured nine, most recently in 1990; censure does not remove a senator from office.⁶

Members judging members has long drawn criticism. The Congressional Research Service notes that both ethics committees have sometimes been perceived as reluctant to investigate and discipline colleagues, and that they work with little publicity so as not to prejudge allegations. Dennis Thompson, a Harvard professor of public policy, long argued for an independent body such as an ethics commission to counter what the report describes as the institutional conflict of interest of members judging members.³

The House's independent office followed efforts inside and outside Congress to create such a body, but the Ethics Committee kept the final say. Options the Congressional Research Service lists for Congress include writing the office into law, giving it limited subpoena power, placing it within the Ethics Committee, or taking no immediate action.³