Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick’s legal team presented her first detailed public defense against allegations of “extensive misconduct” during a six-hour House Ethics Committee hearing Thursday evening.

The Democratic lawmaker is also facing criminal charges alleging that she stole Covid relief funds after the state made a $5 million overpayment error to her family’s healthcare company. Both the Department of Justice and the House Ethics Committee have accused her of funneling part of that money into her campaign. She has pleaded not guilty.

The House committee met for a rare, publicly televised ethics hearing to discuss a 242-page motion accusing Cherfilus-McCormick of 27 violations of laws and regulations including money laundering, accepting unauthorized campaign funds and filing false campaign finance reports.

House Ethics Committee staff released their allegations after a two-year investigation in which they issued 59 subpoenas, reviewed 33,000 documents and interviewed 28 witnesses. Throughout the years-long investigation, Cherfilus-McCormick declined interview requests from the committee and provided little to no defense against the committee’s allegations.

But Thursday’s hearing revealed how the congresswoman’s legal team is planning to clear her name — and fight her criminal case. The attorney who represented her during the hearing is also defending her in federal criminal court.

William Barzee is the latest of four attorneys who have represented her over the course of the House investigation, which members of the committee repeatedly complained about. He joined her ethics defense team just three weeks ago.

He laid out his argument Thursday that the vast majority of the funds the House Ethics Committee says were unlawful corporate funds funneled to her campaign were actually dollars she rightfully earned.

“The congresswoman [was] driving around the state of Florida, trying to get unrepresented communities vaccinated from the COVID virus. That’s what she’s doing. And that work is what the consulting work was,” Barzee argued.

He built his case using an unsigned document showing how her family’s healthcare company, Trinity Healthcare Services, planned to divide up funds between family members and staff. He called this document a “profit sharing agreement,” and said it proved her rightful ownership to the more than $6.7 million she received in compensation from Trinity in 2021 and 2022. She only made $86,000 for her role as CEO of Trinity in 2020, according to the ethics committee.

When she transferred millions to her campaign, Barzee said, she used the right that any member of Congress has to use an unlimited amount of their own money to try and get elected.

Committee members were unconvinced, questioning why the congresswoman waited until the day of the hearing to produce such a document when Ethics Committee staff said proof of her rightful ownership of the funds was explicitly requested months ago.

Lawmakers also pointed out that the one-pager was unsigned and simply a chart. Both Cherfilus-McCormick and her husband are lawyers, one pointed out.

“The way that you and I would handle a business is not the way everyone handles a business,” Barzee said. “And in the community, in the Haitian-American community, it is not unusual for these types of agreements to be made orally, to be made with a handshake, to be made with a family trust. And I know that that’s not the way we all do it.”

Barzee argued that Trinity had been a successful family company for 30 years and received $14 million in disaster relief funds during the Covid pandemic. He did not dispute that $5 million of that was from an overpayment by the state that the company kept for years before the state sued them in civil court to recoup its mistake.

He argued that she was paid for work she did from the legitimate portion of those payments to Trinity, and that she should not be held responsible for the company’s role in keeping the $5 million overpayment until it was sued by the state.

House Ethics Committee staff said his last ditch effort to prove she was the rightful owner of the millions of dollars funneled to her campaign was too little, too late and asked committee members to sign off on their motion for summary judgment finding her guilty of all 27 counts of misconduct — a type of civil court proceeding that does not involve a full trial.

The committee did not decide on summary judgment Thursday. But Barzee’s argument during the hearing offered the first clear detailing of how her team plans to combat the separate criminal charges over the $5 million overpayment. A hearing in that case is scheduled for next month, and Barzee said Thursday he expects that case to go to trial in later summer or early fall this year.

Barzee initially tried to get Thursday’s hearing postponed so he could have more time to prepare as a new attorney on the case and because potential jurors in her separate criminal case would be “tainted” by news headlines of the House finding her “guilty,” he said.

After discussing the matter, lawmakers proceeded with the hearing anyway, accusing Cherfilus-McCormick of “a lack of candor” over the matter and stonewalling them.

Republican Brad Knott insisted Thursday that any findings by the committee would be about violations of “rules not crimes,” so their proceedings wouldn’t put her right to an impartial jury in jeopardy.

The House Ethics Committee will vote on the matter in a closed-door meeting and present their decision in the coming weeks. If they approve it, the committee will hold another meeting to discuss potential sanctions and could schedule a full House floor vote on censuring or expelling the Congresswoman from the House.

According to House Ethics Committee staff, Thursday’s hearing was scheduled so that there would be enough time to potentially hold such a vote before a “blackout” period beginning in late June that would block any such action during the two months leading up to Florida’s primary elections in August.

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