After months fending off tough questions, Rep. Charles Rangel has only weeks to go until he receives judgment from his peers on the House ethics committee.
Even his harshest critics think that's good news for the lawmaker as he tries to hold on to his powerful chairmanship of a tax-writing committee.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said she had been assured the committee's investigation into Rangel's taxes, finances, and fundraising letters will conclude by Jan. 3, when the current session of Congress ends.
"I took that to mean he has nothing to worry about," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem, also insists he has nothing to worry about. He formally asked the ethics committee to investigate him after a series of damaging revelations:
-- He did not report roughly $75,000 in rental income from a beach house in the Dominican Republic.
-- He used three rent-stabilized apartments -- including one for a campaign office -- in the same building in Harlem.
-- He used congressional stationery to try to drum up financial support for a college center to be named after him.
In response, Republicans urged Pelosi to strip Rangel of his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. She refused, saying the ethics committee would investigate first.
Rangel, who has been in Congress for almost 40 years, has admitted to making mistakes, but insists they were accidents, not intentional deceptions.
The numerous issues alone meant plenty of work for the ethics committee investigators, but since that probe was launched there have been more damaging stories, most notably a report in The New York Times that he helped preserve an off-shore tax loophole for a company after the chief of the firm pledged $1 million to the Rangel center.
Rangel denies any wrongdoing, saying he did not help the company as it sought protection from a multimillion-dollar tax penalty.
The drip, drip of negative stories about Rangel has meant more headaches for Pelosi as she tries to establish a stronger Democratic majority in the House.
During a visit to New York City last week, Pelosi said she didn't "foresee" Rangel losing his chairmanship, and the Harlem Democrat separately told reporters that Pelosi told him that he will be her chairman of the committee "as long as I want to be."
Pelosi's spokesman Brendan Daly said she is just waiting to see what the ethics committee finds.
"The speaker has said that she looks forward to receiving the report from the ethics committee. She has been assured by her staff that they normally would wrap up by the end of a Congress but if they don't they would continue in the new Congress," said Daly. "We'll see what happens after that."
The mixed messages and seemingly fixed schedule of the investigation leaves Sloan skeptical that the Democrats have learned anything from the ethical messes of the Republican majority they defeated in 2006.
"Anybody who watches knows that the ethics committee doesn't do anything harsh to anybody," she said. "Part of the problem the House has right now is they don't have a standard for when you lose your chairmanship."
Even were the ethics committee's report to publicly hammer Rangel, it is doubtful he could be convinced to give up the gavel quietly.
When he first began to publicly defend himself, Rangel and his then-lawyer pledged to make public his tax returns, and an independent forensic accountant's report of his finances. Since then, neither Rangel nor his new lawyer are making any such assurances.
And politically, Rangel still has plenty of strength where it counts.
He represents an overwhelmingly Democratic district, and fellow Democratic lawmakers have stood by him and repeatedly affirmed their support. If Pelosi were to try to force him out, she may have a lot more than one chairman to fight.
