How Did McCain Escape Expulsion from the Senate?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

John McCain, according to a revelatory article in The New Republic, was almost certainly the source for illegal leaks during the Keating Five investigation -- leaks that, if proven, would have been cause for his expulsion from the United States Senate for perjury. Additionally, according to a report by Sam Stein in today's Huffington Post, John McCain lied to the Keating Five investigators about the extent of his family's financial ties to Charles Keating. These lies could also have been cause for his fellow Senators to expel McCain from their ranks, had they been discovered at the time.

How did John McCain escape expulsion from the Senate? Leaking details of the investigation, lying under oath about those leaks, and lying to investigators about the details of one's family's business dealings with Charles Keating are certainly valid reasons for being expelled from the Senate.

First, the leaks from the Senate Ethics Committee investigation. Sahil Mahtani reports in The New Republic (my bold):

Yet the Ethics Committee's was not the only investigation into the scandal. There were two other probes at the time that got barely any public attention--


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