by Andrew Kerr at The Washington Free Beacon
When it comes to the lavish $1 million Atlanta home where Sen. Raphael Warnock has lived rent-free since 2023, the Georgia Democrat can’t expect to have his cake and eat it too, an ethics watchdog alleged in a complaint filed Monday.
Warnock’s lavish DeKalb County home came equipped with a plethora of luxury accommodations, including a 100-bottle wine fridge, a bluetooth-enabled cooking range, and remote-controlled privacy curtains. The senator hasn’t paid a penny out of his own pocket to live there because the church where he serves as a part-time pastor is footing the bill, the Washington Free Beacon reported. It’s a great deal for Warnock, but it may violate Senate ethics rules that limit how much lawmakers can accept from outside employment, the ethics watchdog Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) alleged in a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.
“This is a matter of plain common sense,” FACT executive director Kendra Arnold said in the complaint. “It is difficult to fathom [how] any citizen could look at this situation (a U.S. Senator being a part-time employee of an organization that happens to buy him a million-dollar house to live in for free after he was elected to Congress, and after which he sells his own house) and not think something potentially very wrong is afoot.”
In her complaint, Arnold said Warnock’s free luxury housing arrangement likely violates the Ethics in Government Act, which could carry a range of sanctions for the Georgia Democrat including public reprimand, fines, or censure. She said Senate ethics rules only allow for Warnock’s free housing deal if it’s customary for Ebenezer Baptist Church to provide free luxury homes to its part-time pastors and if it’s something the church provided to Warnock independently from his position as a senator.
Those requirements “have not been met,”…
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