House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) prepares to hold a hearing in September. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Update 12:25: In an emergency meeting, House Republicans voted to strip the amendment that would have gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics. Still, it almost certainly isn’t the last we’ll hear of this.

Original:

Welcome to 2017 and a new era in federal governance. Since the swamp has been drained, with squeaky clean Republicans in power, who needs an independent ethics office?

Scurrying past the objections reportedly raised by leaders Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans voted 119-74 in an unannounced meeting last night to strip the Office of Congressional Ethics of meaningful power.

The move, led by Virginia’s Rep. Bob Goodlatte, would place oversight of the office back in the hands of the House Ethics Committee, which had previously neglected several high-profile corruption scandals. If enacted, it would ban the office from investigating anonymous tips against lawmakers or violations of criminal law; allow the House Ethics Committee to stop an investigation at any time; and bar the office from hiring a press person. The proposal even strips the name of its heft, renaming the heretofore independent Office of Congressional Ethics to the Office of Congressional Complaint Review.

“Undermining the independence of the House’s Office of Congressional Ethics would create a serious risk to members of Congress, who rely on OCE for fair, nonpartisan investigations, and to the American people, who expect their representatives to meet their legal and ethical obligations,” wrote two ethics lawyers who served in both the Obama and Bush administrations. “If the 115th Congress begins with rules amendments undermining OCE, it is setting itself up to be dogged by scandals and ethics issues for years and is returning the House to dark days when ethics violations were rampant and far too often tolerated.”

In his own way and form, President-elect Donald Trump also chided the maneuver (or at least it’s timing) over two tweets. “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it ……..may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance!”

The full House is set to vote on the measure, as part of a full set of Congressional rules, on Tuesday.

“The amendment builds upon and strengthens the existing Office of Congressional Ethics by maintaining its primary area of focus of accepting and reviewing complaints from the public and referring them, if appropriate, to the Committee on Ethics,” Goodlatte said in a statement. “It also improves upon due process rights for individuals under investigation, as well as witnesses called to testify.”

Ah yes, the “individuals under investigation.” According to Politico, several lawmakers whose behavior had come under OCE scrutiny were behind the maneuver.

One of those was Rep. Blake Farenthold, the Texas Republican who was accused by a former staffer of sexual harassment. The OCE recommended in September 2015 that the Ethics panel drop a probe of the matter, but Farenthold did not like the way the case was handled. A court later threw out the staffers’ lawsuit as well.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) also spoke in support of the measure. The Ethics Committee, at the behest of OCE, had probed whether Roskam accepted an impermissible gift when he and his wife traveled to Taiwan in October 2011. The Ethics Committee approved the Roskams’ trip beforehand as permissible under federal law, but OCE believed the Taiwanese government and not the Chinese Culture University—the official sponsor—“was conducting and organizing his trip.”

The Roskams’ daughter was also staying in Taiwan at that time, and OCE noted that the Roskams sought to include her as part of their itinerary for the $24,000-plus trip. Roskam strongly denied any improper or unethical behavior, and the Ethics Committee eventually dropped the case.

Reps. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) also vocally supported the amendment. They or their staff had come under OCE’s microscope.