Government Oversight & Ethics

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said he’d never seen President Trump fall asleep during meetings. 

During his second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hopes that the latest round of high-level political talks between Israel and Lebanon will result in a joint statement on ending hostilities. Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the U.S. are meeting at the State Department for a second day of negotiations.

Watch the full hearing in the video player above.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-California, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a tense exchange in a congressional hearing Wednesday over President Donald Trump dozing off in public appearances, like Cabinet meetings.

Watch the exchange in our video player above.

Lieu asked Rubio to focus on the president, whose eyes are closed, in a video of a Cabinet meeting in December.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., called the Trump administration's new "anti-weaponization" fund "unethical" and slammed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

"Let me tell you a little bit about why this nearly $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund is completely unethical and totally ridiculous," Lieu said at a news conference, saying it came from a "fake settlement" with "fake negotiations."

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) on Sunday called a recent Virginia Supreme Court ruling rolling back redistricting in the state “disgraceful,” saying the court “suckered the people of Virginia.”

“So, what the Virginia Supreme Court did was not only wrong, it was disgraceful. They basically said, ‘Hey, Virginia, spend all this taxpayers’ money holding an election, do all this stuff and oh, by the way, just kidding, that election didn’t count,’” Lieu told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan.

Congressional lawmakers are discussing ways to reform internal ethics procedures or investigating misconduct by members, after three lawmakers resigned in April alone for alleged bad behavior.

The challenging part, however, will be deciding which reforms to chase. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA), a member of the House Ethics Committee, told the Washington Examiner that the panel should be more aggressive in its approach toward members.