As thousands of people crowded the streets calling for Gov. Ricardo Rosselló to step down, the president of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives created a special committee on Friday to advise him on whether the governor committed impeachable offenses.
The committee’s formation comes after days of protests, sparked in part by the leaks of offensive private chat messages between the US territory’s governor and his inner circle, while the island has battled high poverty rates, crushing government debt and a painful recovery from 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria.
The impeachment research committee includes three attorneys who will have 10 days to provide a detailed report to Carlos “Johnny” Méndez, according to a news release from the House leader’s spokesman, Raúl Colón.
The committee will evaluate the content of leaked messages between Rosselló and Cabinet members and determine if there’s proof Rosselló committed a crime, Méndez said.
“We are here to order this evaluation, one that will be transparent and responsible,” he said. “I thank this group of lawyers for giving a step forward in this historic moment for Puerto Rico. We will thoroughly evaluate the conclusions of this committee so we can proceed.”
The chaos in Puerto Rico follows the Center for Investigative Journalism’s publication of nearly 900 pages of leaked chats from the governor’s private Telegram Messenger group in which he and 11 top aides and Cabinet members exchanged profanity-laced, homophobic and misogynistic messages about fellow politicians, members of the media and celebrities. In one, the former chief financial officer appeared to joke about those who died in Maria.
While Rosselló has refused to step down, two Cabinet members who participated in the chats resigned July 13. And on Friday, one of his aides — press secretary Dennise Peréz — also stepped down.
In her resignation letter, Peréz lamented that someone had called her corrupt in front of her son.
“While holding my head high and my family close, I thought I could go through anything and continued doing my job professionally, just how I have been for the last 20 years,” she said. “Like you are aware, this week, a citizen, without any consideration, called me corrupt and did it in front of my son. This is where I draw the line.”
The leak came the same week that two former officials from Rosselló’s administration were arrested by the FBI as part of a federal corruption investigation.
