The Senate Has an 18-Year Perfect Ethics Streak, Says the Senate

Lawmakers are batting 0-for-1,826 in issuing “disciplinary sanctions” for alleged bad behavior.

Corridor leading to the Senate chamber

The new committee report was quietly posted on the committee’s website without fanfare or a press release. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics did not formally punish anyone in 2024 — despite receiving 158 complaints that year of alleged violations of Senate rules, according to a new committee report reviewed by NOTUS.

No, not even former Sen. Robert Menendez, who a judge sentenced last month to 11 years in federal prison on a bribery conviction. Menendez skirted Senate Ethics Committee comeuppance because the committee “lost jurisdiction for its adjudicatory review” when the senator resigned in August.

With this latest report, lawmakers officially marked the 18th year in a row that the notoriously secretive committee failed to formally punish anyone within its jurisdiction, which includes Senate staffers and senators.