Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) U.S. government ethics and accountability watchdog organization. Founded in 2003 as a counterweight to conservative government watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch, CREW works to expose ethics violations and corruption by government officials and institutions and to reduce the role of money in politics.
Its activities include investigating, reporting and litigating government misconduct, requesting and forcing government information disclosure through FOIA requests, and filing congressional ethics complaints against individuals, institutions and agencies. Its projects have included the publication of "CREW's Most Corrupt Members of Congress", an annual report in which CREW lists the people it determines to be the Federal government of the United States's most corrupt politicians. From 2005 and 2014 the annual reports named 25 Democrats and 63 Republicans.
David Brock became CREW's chairman in 2014 and stepped down in 2016. He was replaced by Richard Painter, who went on to take a leave of absence to run as a Democrat in Minnesota's 2018 U.S. Senate special election. Under Painter's leadership, CREW pursued aggressive litigation against the Trump administration, which it called the "most unethical presidency" in U.S. history. CREW filed 41 lawsuits during George W. Bush's administration, 38 during Barack Obama's administration and, by January 2018, 180 against the Trump administration.
History
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was co-founded in 2003 by Norman L. Eisen and Melanie Sloan in part as a liberal / progressive counterweight to conservative watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch. Sloan initially ran the fledgling organization by herself; by 2007, CREW had 13 staff members. By 2016, the group had four lawyers on staff.
Chairmanships of David Brock and Richard Painter
In August 2014, liberal political operative David Brock was elected chairman of CREW's board of directors. At the time, USA Today wrote that "One of the most vocal congressional ethics watchdog groups is becoming part of a Democratic political operation." Politico wrote that Brock's newly announced involvement with CREW was a "major power play that aligns liberal muscle more fully behind the Democratic Party" and that CREW would add a "more politically oriented arm, expand its focus into state politics and donor targeting and will operate in close coordination with Brock's growing fleet of aggressive Democrat-backing nonprofits and super PACs—Media Matters, American Bridge, and the American Independent Institute." Prior to Brock's involvement with CREW, the group had aggressively targeted Republican public officials as well as some Democrats. The Center for Public Integrity wrote that "Many key staffers left soon after Brock became its chairman, and since then, the organization has almost exclusively pursued Republicans and conservative organizations through federal complaints and its own investigations." In April 2016, Bloomberg reported that Republicans had faced the vast majority of CREW investigations in recent months.
Brock left CREW's board of directors in December 2017, but did not cut ties with the group and continued to fundraise for it. He was replaced by former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, "lending the group a bipartisan air," according to Politico. Painter took a leave of absence from CREW to run as a Democrat in Minnesota's 2018 U.S. Senate special election.
In December 2016, Politico wrote that after its 2003 founding, CREW had "quickly built a strong reputation as an ethics watchdog and transparency advocate, filing complaints against lawmakers from both parties, though the bulk of its ethics work targeted Republicans. However, in recent years CREW faced increased questions about its credibility, stemming from a 2014 shift that brought the group under Brock's sway and—in the eyes of many observers—into the Clinton orbit. Brock and his allies joined the group's board, while several longtime employees left." In 2015, CREW had revenue of just under $2.2 million. CREW filed just one lawsuit in 2015 and three in 2016, all asking the Federal Election Commission for stricter enforcement of campaign finance laws.