Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., House Judiciary Committee chairman. (Photo: Reuters/Yuri Gripas)

In a closed-door meeting Monday night, House Republicans unexpectedly voted to all but destroy an independent ethics group that investigates them for wrongdoing. The move immediately drew intense criticism from Democrats and watchdog organizations, which portrayed the vote as a betrayal of the incoming Republican president’s campaign vow to “drain the swamp.”

Tuesday morning, House Republicans reversed course and voted down the controversial amendment.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., offered the surprise amendment to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. The full Congress will vote on the entire rules package Tuesday, the first day of its new term.

Goodlatte’s move would change the name of the group from Office of Congressional Ethics to Office of Congressional Complaint Review, strip it of its independence, block it from investigating any wrongdoing that occurred prior to 2011, and prevent it from releasing its findings to the public, without the authorization of the House Committee on Ethics. The rules change would also prevent the panel from alerting law enforcement to criminal activity without the approval of the House committee.

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump criticized the “timing” of the ethics vote, but called the group itself “unfair.” The president-elect took to Twitter to argue that House members should be focused on other legislative priorities. Earlier, his top adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on Good Morning America that Republicans had a “mandate” to gut the ethics office.

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 — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017





……..may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017





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“Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic minority leader, said in a statement. “Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress.”

“Poor way to begin draining the swamp,” tweeted Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, which had launched lawsuits over Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

House GOP guts ethics panel. Swamp wins with help of @SpeakerRyan, @RepGoodlatte https://t.co/JFATNP1i8f — Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 3, 2017





The top ethics lawyers under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama said in a joint statement that Congress was “setting itself up to be dogged by scandals and ethics issues for years” and was returning the House to “dark days.”

The Office of Congressional Ethics is an independent entity run by five board members appointed by the House majority leader and five members appointed by the House minority leader. (Currently, however, the board has only seven members.) The members are not allowed to run for public office. The group, which publicly releases its reports, investigates tips from the public and elsewhere about potential rule-breaking by lawmakers. This year, the watchdog group asked the House Committee on Ethics to investigate Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., for paying for a personal family vacation with campaign funds, and Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., for potential conflicts of interest with his hedge fund.

Goodlatte claimed that the changes “strengthens the mission” of the ethics watchdog group while protecting the “due process” rights of House members and staffers.

Former Speaker John Boehner was a supporter of the Office of Congressional Ethics, but current Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., initially kept silent about it. On Tuesday, Ryan issued a statement defending the changes.

Ryan Statement on the Office of Congressional Ethics https://t.co/EQwU0E1bwn — Brendan Buck (@BrendanBuck) January 3, 2017





The group was created in 2008 amid concerns that the House Committee on Ethics was not being aggressive enough in its investigations of its own members. The ethics committee investigates ethics violations only if another member of Congress suggests it, unlike the Office of Congressional Ethics, which takes tips from all sources.

In fact, in her 2008 floor speech before voting for the bill to create the office, Pelosi said its intention was to “drain the swamp.” Trump recently said that will always be the motto of his administration.

Someone incorrectly stated that the phrase "DRAIN THE SWAMP" was no longer being used by me. Actually, we will always be trying to DTS. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016





Updated 10:11 a.m. ET to include Trump’s criticism.