House Ethics Panel Won't Release Waters Report on Misconduct Investigation June 8, 2012, 4:53 pm The House Ethics Committee refused to release on Friday the internal material it used for its decision earlier this week to move ahead with charges against Representative Maxine Waters of California. On Thursday, Ms. Waters, a Democrat, and her supporters in the House, wrote to the ethics committee to demand that it make public the material produced by an outside counsel, Billy Martin, in investigating claims of misconduct by committee staff members who had been examining the Waters matter. Committee leaders, relying on the material produced by Mr. Martin, found that committee staff members may have leaked confidential material and acted inappropriately at times in their investigation, but that these problems did not prevent Ms. Waters from receiving a fair hearing. The committee said it planned to move ahead with long-stalled charges that Ms. Waters had inappropriately sought to steer federal bailout money to a Boston bank in which her husband owned stock. In a letter on Friday to Ms. Waters and her supporters, members of the House Ethics Committee said they were refusing to make public the material produced by Mr. Martin in his review because it remains confidential. They said there was "no justification" for releasing material on an ongoing investigation and that doing so would conflict with the committee's interesting in "keeping matters of House discipline free from political or outside influence."